Last Call For A Supreme End To Voting

The US Supreme Court today agreed to hear two Arizona voting cases that could spell the complete end of the Voting Rights Act, and the end of the Democratic Party. Ian Millhiser calls it the biggest direct threat to voting in decades:

The specific issue in the Democratic National Committee cases concerns two Arizona laws that require certain ballots to be discarded. One law requires voting officials to discard in their entirety ballots cast by voters who vote in the wrong precinct (rather than simply not counting votes for local candidates that the voter should not have been able to vote for).

The other law prohibits “ballot collection” (or “ballot harvesting”) where a voter gives their absentee ballot to a third party, who delivers that ballot to the election office. (Arizona is one of many states that impose at least some restrictions on ballot collection.)

Both of these laws disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color. As a federal appeals court explained in an opinion striking down the two laws, “uncontested evidence in the district court established that minority voters in Arizona cast [out of precinct] ballots at twice the rate of white voters.” And Hispanic and Native American voters are especially likely to rely on a third party to ensure that their ballot is cast.

One reason for this disparity is that some parts of the state require voters to cast their ballot in counterintuitive locations. Some Maricopa County voters, for example, were required to “travel 15 minutes by car (according to [G]oogle maps) to vote” in their assigned polling location, “passing four other polling places along the way,” according to an expert witness.

In addition, according to the appeals court, many Arizona voters of color lack easy access to the mail and are unable to easily travel on their own to cast a ballot. As the appeals court explained, “in urban areas of heavily Hispanic counties, many apartment buildings lack outgoing mail services,” and only 18 percent of Native American registered voters have home mail service.

Meanwhile, Black, Native, and Hispanic voters are “significantly less likely than non-minorities to own a vehicle” and more likely to have “inflexible work schedules.” Thus, their ability to vote might depend on their ability to give their ballot to a friend or an activist who will take that ballot to the polls for them.

The legal rules implementing the Voting Rights Act are complicated. And the specific legal rules governing these cases are impossible to summarize in a concise way. Courts have to consider myriad factors, including “the extent of any history of official discrimination” in a state accused of violating the Voting Rights Act, and “the extent to which voting in the elections of the state or political subdivision is racially polarized.”

In any event, a majority of the appeals court judges who considered Arizona’s two laws determined that they violate the Voting Rights Act.

 

Of course this means that given Chief Justice John Roberts and his notorious hatred for voting rights, there's already 5 votes on SCOTUS to overturn this and allow states to make voting as difficult as possible for Black, Hispanic, and Native voters.

 

And that's the point.

Congress Goes Viral, Con't

Mitch McConnell may be willing to sacrifice the Senate GOP in order to hurt Democratic voters in need of COVID-19 relief, but the Senate GOP may not be willing to jump off this particular cliff.

With their majority on the line, Senate Republicans are beginning to fret about the prospect of facing voters in the final weeks of the campaign without a new round of coronavirus aid being enacted.

As the talks between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin teetered Thursday on the verge of collapse, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to stay outside the blast zone. Many of his members up for reelection say it would be a mistake for the Senate to adjourn for the election without taking action to give people some relief.

“There’s no reason we shouldn’t all be here until the election if that’s what it takes to pass a follow up to the CARES Act,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is in a tight race with Democrat Cal Cunningham. The pair were scheduled to face off in a debate on Thursday night.

“I do not think we should recess without a coronavirus package,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is facing Sara Gideon, the Democratic Maine state House speaker. “We're not that far apart.”

Heading into the election empty-handed would surely be a drag on vulnerable senators and House members in both parties. The U.S. economy is mired in a recession, the coronavirus is continuing to spread across the country with no signs of relenting and massive layoffs are being reported daily. Congress is in line to shoulder much of the blame for not offering any relief to the crisis since the spring.

The Senate appears to be sticking around for at least another week, if not more, to keep the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett moving forward. Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on Barrett are set to begin Oct. 12. And the House can always reconvene to process a bill if there’s any deal. But it might take a push from those most at risk of losing their jobs in a month to get any deal over the finish line.

The effort to get Pelosi and Mnuchin back to the table started among moderate Democrats in the House. And it’s clear Senate Republicans in tough races are getting similarly antsy, even as they criticize Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for refusing to accept a slimmer stimulus bill in September.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), facing challenger MJ Hegar this fall, said what worries him most is that a vaccine “will be delayed because of the lack of funds because of no deal.”

“This should’ve been done three weeks ago,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who narrowly leads Democrat Jon Ossoff. “Yeah, I’m very frustrated by that. Mnuchin and [Pelosi] have been talking this week about some sort of compromise. … I’m hopeful. We’re coming back next week, and frankly, I don’t think we should leave until we get it done.”

Vulnerable Senate Republicans, though, aren’t blaming McConnell for the failure to reach an agreement. McConnell offered a roughly $500 billion package several weeks ago, only to see Schumer reject it as woefully inadequate to the needs facing the country. Democrats ultimately blocked the measure from advancing.

McConnell and his leadership team have been resolute that their conference is so divided over how much to spend that they have to keep spending levels as low as possible to generate maximum GOP support. But Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another Republican facing a surprisingly tough challenge this year, said his party is warming to the $1.6 trillion number set forth by the administration.

“We need a package. But it’s got to be something that’s reasonable. It doesn’t help me to throw money at the problem, it does help me to put money where it matters,” said Graham, who is narrowly leading Democrat Jaime Harrison. “Half of us would vote for a package. Maybe more now, if it’s reasonable."

 

If you still needed proof that Collins, Tillis, Perdue, Cornyn and Graham are all in real trouble in their internal polling, you have to look no further. And Nancy Pelosi just plunged the knife in with a $2.2 trillion package passed Thursday by the House that now leaves the Senate holding the bag with roughly 30 days to go before judgement. Mitch may be able to save himself, but he'll lose control of the Senate at this rate and he knows it.

Besides, Trump wants a deal. He clearly wants to bribe people to vote for him, and he so badly wants all the credit for the government doing things. He may go over Mitch's head on this one, especially with him still down 7 points with just a month to go.

I'm still convinced that no relief will come until after the election, and nothing may come at all as long as Mitch controls the Senate. But if he doesn't, or Trump gives him an ultimatum, we'll see just where this goes.

Retribution Execution, Con't

GOP senators have threatened for a while to take up the Trump regime's battlecry on social meadia "fairness" in order to make social media stop policing their white supremacist allies and to go after marginalized groups to silence them permanently, and now they are bringing the force of subpoenas and legislation to bear just in time for the election.

 

The Trump administration is pressuring Senate Republicans to ratchet up scrutiny of social media companies it sees as biased against conservatives in the run-up to the November election, people familiar with the conversations say. And the effort appears to be paying off.

In recent weeks, the White House has pressed Senate Republican leaders on key committees to hold public hearings on the law that protects Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies from lawsuits over how they treat user posts, three Senate staffers told POLITICO. They requested anonymity to discuss private communications.

And action is following. Senate Commerce Chair Roger Wicker held a vote in his committee Thursday to issue subpoenas to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google to testify about how they police content on their platforms. That's after Democrats initially prevented the Mississippi Republican from pushing through subpoenas that could have compelled the CEOs to testify with only a few days' notice.

Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), meanwhile, last week introduced new legislation to address alleged bias on social media and the same day scheduled a markup of the bill for Thursday — a move that would have made it the fastest any bill on tech's liability protections has moved from introduction to a markup on Capitol Hill in recent memory. Graham announced Thursday that consideration of the measure had been tabled.

Both committees are targeting liability protections that have been credited with fueling Silicon Valley's success. The provision — enshrined in a 1996 law known as Section 230 — has allowed online businesses to grow without fear of lawsuits over user posts or their decisions to remove or otherwise moderate users' content.

Both lawmakers have reason to want to get in the White House's good graces. Graham, a prominent Trump ally, is facing the fight of his political life to hold onto his South Carolina seat against Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison. And Wicker will want to maintain a firm hold on his gavel, which gives him jurisdiction over most legislation targeting Section 230.

The congressional actions mark a sudden and dramatic escalation of efforts by Senate Republicans to revamp the legal shield — particularly with a Congress readying for elections and embroiled in negotiations over Covid relief. But Republicans say Section 230 has allowed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative viewpoints with impunity. Tech companies deny any such bias, and the administration itself has noted there's limited academic data to back up the concerns.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a top Trump ally on tech and longtime critic of Section 230, called the recent surge of activity by his colleagues "a sea change." President Donald Trump, he said, has been a driving force in rallying them.

“There’s hardly a conversation I have with the president where this doesn’t come up, where Section 230 does not come up, usually raised by him,” Hawley said in an interview. “It is much on his mind and I think his strong stance on this issue has had a big effect in opening the eyes of some of my Republican colleagues to realize this is a major issue.”

 

There are multiple reasons as to why Trump and the GOP want to go after social media giants, and frankly they are way too powerful and unaccountable.  But the real goal here is to force Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other media platforms to knuckle under the GOP and serve as their digital media arm, or the GOP opens the floodgates for these corporations to be sued out of existence.

It's also a chilling reminder that if they don't stop tagging Trump's lies and disinformation as such in the final weeks of the election, the price they will pay will be in the tens of billions.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump and Melania Trump have both tested positive for COVID-19, Trump announced his status on Twitter early Friday morning after aide Hope Hicks tested positive earlier this week.
  
•  A federal judge has ruled that the Barr Justice Department "improperly" redacted parts of the Mueller Report and must release the full version to the public.
• House Democrats have passed a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 aid package after negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin fell apart this week.
• Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is facing angry Senate Democrats who say she did not reveal the fact she signed onto a political ad calling for the overturning of Roe v Wade.
• Mississippi says AT&T took nearly $300 million to deploy rural broadband services in the state but has yet to actually start on the job, the state is investigating possible fraud.
  

Last Call For The Great Cincy Bag Job

Last month, Cincinnati City Council passed an ordnance banning the use of plastic bags by businesses in the city set for January 1 .Ohio state Republicans are responding with a bill that will prevent local governments from doing that, and GOP Gov. Mike DeWine says he'll sign it, because he's a Republican (and somehow people keep forgetting this.)

The Ohio Legislature has passed a controversial bill that bans communities from passing bans on containers like plastic bags or Styrofoam. Gov. DeWine, who once opposed the idea, is signaling he’ll sign this bill into law.

The bill preventing cities from passing bans on plastic bags and single use containers has been revised from its original form. It will only be in place for a year and that’s why DeWine has changed his position on it.

“And I will sign the bill because it is temporary and I think you can make an argument for it because of the COVID period," DeWine says.

DeWine has said he opposed the original idea because he thinks communities should have that control. But he says with so many places offering carry out, now is not the time for such bans.

The funny part is it won't be temporary. 

Business groups, including the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants and the Ohio Grocers Association, support the changes. They are opposed by local-government groups and environmental advocates.

Rep. George Lang, R-West Chester and primary sponsor of the legislation, said many businesses have moved to single-use bags and containers as part of efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19.

And he said the bill's changes would ensure more uniformity in business regulations.

“Currently, Ohio has more different taxing jurisdictions than any state in America,” Lang said. “Let that sink in: We have more than New York, more than New Jersey, more than California, more than Illinois.”

Citing about a half-dozen Ohio communities that have worked with businesses to help develop bans on plastic bags, the Ohio Municipal League urged DeWine to veto the legislation.

"This just continues to add to the stack of preemptions the legislature has imposed on local control and home rule," said Kent Scarrett, executive director of the league. "We think it is very disconcerting."

"So this legislation will wipe out years of partnerships that have been developed. It's an overstep by the legislature to interfere in the values of local communities."

Scarrett said that plastic manufacturers have successfully mounted a nationwide campaign to lobby lawmakers in many states to forbid environmentally friendly local regulation of single-use plastics.

The former Ohio Speaker of the House is under a bribery and racketeering scandal and people really think Ohio Republicans aren't going to just turn around and make this ban permanent because P&G and other corporate business lobbyists are going to play fair?

Yeah, right. I'll take that oceanfront property in Dayton too.

The Blue Tsunami Rises, Con't

Democrats believe South Carolina is in play, and the Lindsey Graham is vulnerable, and they're going all out to help Jaime Harrison pull off the upset of the year...and maybe win the state for Biden.

 

If you think you are already being inundated with political ads for South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, just wait until you see the bombardment that’s in store for the final month.

The high-profile contest between Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham and Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison has already shattered Palmetto State records, with at least $72 million spent so far on advertising by both the candidates and outside groups, according to media monitoring firm Advertising Analytics.

That spending is spearheaded by Harrison, who has drastically outpaced Graham, shelling out almost $50 million since the June primaries compared to less than $20 million by Graham. Harrison also has considerably more spending planned for October than Graham, about $13 million to $3 million.

With more cash continuing to flow into both Harrison and Graham’s campaign coffers and additional outside groups jumping into the fray, enticed by public polls that show a neck-and-neck race between the candidates, the total cost is likely to climb even higher in the lead-up to the Nov. 3 election.

In the latest poll of likely South Carolina voters out Wednesday from Quinnipiac University, Graham and Harrison were tied at 48 percentage points each, which was unchanged from the same pollster’s last survey two weeks ago.

Results like that, along with Graham’s role leading the upcoming confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee as Senate Judiciary chairman, will only draw more resources to the state, prompting Republican media consultant Kurt Pickhardt to predict South Carolina’s first ever nine-figure race.

“South Carolina politics has seen a lot of things, but a $100 million Senate race isn’t one of them,” said Pickhardt, the vice president of Smart Media Group, a GOP media-buying firm based in D.C. “That’s a very real possibility this cycle.”

 

Harrison has both the cash and the momentum.  Quinnipiac University's poll over the weekend had him tied, 48% a piece.  The thing that might save Graham is Independent candidate Bill Bledsoe, who is bleeding off just enough anti-Graham vote at 2% or so to most likely give him the win.

Still, Harrison has come closer than anyone so far. He could win. Still a month to go.

A Conspiracy Of Dunces, Con't

Republicans unleashed their dangerous QAnon conspiracy nutjobs on House Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski, and now the New Jersey congressman and his family are fending off daily death threats serious enough to warrant law enforcement investigations. He's far from the only Democratic politician facing these lunatics, either.

 

Last month, the House Republican campaign committee falsely accused Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of lobbying to “protect sexual predators.” 

On Tuesday, followers of QAnon — a collective delusion that alleges President Donald Trump is fighting a Satanist cabal of elites who abuse children — targeted him, leading to death threats. 

Malinowski had coauthored a bipartisan resolution last month that would have the House formally condemn QAnon and on Tuesday he was the subject of a “Q drop” — conspiracy-filled, false messages posted to message boards from the self-proclaimed US government insider to their followers. The post included a screenshot of Malinowski’s resolution, but it also capitalized on a press release from the National Republican Campaign Committee that falsely alleged that Malinowski “lobbied to protect sexual predators,” along with the message, “Those who scream the loudest…” 

Malinowski received multiple death threats on Tuesday after the Q post went up, he and his office told BuzzFeed News. The NRCC’s press release — as well as a TV ad the group is running against the New Jersey Democrat falsely accusing him of “helping sexual predators hide in the shadows” — echo a baseless conspiracy theory frequently used by QAnon followers that powerful Democrats and global elites are engaged in child trafficking. The ad, which has been repeatedly debunked, includes a narrator saying, “Tom Malinowski chose sex offenders over your family.” 

In an interview with BuzzFeed News Tuesday night, Malinowski said the NRCC bears responsibility for playing into QAnon’s hands and inspiring the violent threats against him. “I think they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew they were playing with fire,” he said in a phone interview.

Malinowski’s campaign, as well as six current and former Republican officials in his district, have called on the NRCC to take the ad down. The group has refused. The New Jersey Star-Ledger has twice called the ad a lie. 

Malinowski told BuzzFeed News that he has also personally confronted Rep. Tom Emmer, who chairs the NRCC, about the attacks, pointing out their connections to QAnon theories. 

“He said, ‘I don’t know what Q is’ and walked away. … He said, 'I can’t be responsible for, you know, how people use our stuff and I don’t know what that is,'” Malinowski said.
Emmer’s office did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment for this story.
Both the ad and the press release were still live at the time of publication. After this story was published, the NRCC retweeted it, doubling down on the false claims about Malinowski, without addressing the death threats against him. Later, the NRCC sent BuzzFeed News a statement again repeating the false claims and adding that Malinowski "must live with the consequences of his actions." 

Malinowski told BuzzFeed News he hadn’t expected to be the target of a Q post, but “it makes sense now.” The post linked his anti-QAnon resolution with the NRCC attacks, he said, “in ways that from a QAnon-conspiracy-minded point of view are obvious and sent his millions of people who follow this crazy, anti-Semitic cult to come after me.” 

QAnon followers have followed through on threats of violence, including a man who blocked off the Hoover Dam with an armored vehicle and was arrested after an armed standoff. The FBI has labeled the group a domestic terror threat. President Donald Trump has praised it. 

 

It really isn't going to be much longer before one of these jackasses shoots a Democrat in the head.

 

Oh wait.  That's happened before. 

Except now, the terrorists are openly working for the Republicans, like Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers.

Even while he courted publicity, Rhodes maintained secrecy around his rank and file. Monitoring groups couldn’t say for sure how many members the Oath Keepers had or what kind of people were joining.

But the leaked database laid everything out. It had been compiled by Rhodes’s deputies as new members signed up at recruiting events or on the Oath Keepers website. They hailed from every state. About two-thirds had a background in the military or law enforcement. About 10 percent of these members were active-duty. There was a sheriff in Colorado, a SWAT-team member in Indiana, a police patrolman in Miami, the chief of a small police department in Illinois. There were members of the Special Forces, private military contractors, an Army psyops sergeant major, a cavalry scout instructor in Texas, a grunt in Afghanistan. There were Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, a 20-year special agent in the Secret Service, and two people who said they were in the FBI.

“I will not go quietly into this dark night that is facing MY beloved America,” a Marine veteran from Wisconsin wrote; an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department said he’d enlist his colleagues “to fight the tyranny our country is facing.” Similar pledges came from a police captain in Texas, an Army recruiter in Oregon, and a Border Patrol agent in Arizona, among many others. “Funny story,” wrote a police sergeant in a St. Louis suburb. “I stopped a speeding truck driver, who had your decal on the side of his truck, I asked about it, he went on and on, I said, ‘Damn I’m all about this.’ ” He listed skills as a firearms and tactical instructor and said he would forward the membership application to his fellow officers. A special agent in the New York City Police Department’s intelligence bureau recalled that he’d been heading to work one day when he saw a window decal with the Oath Keepers logo and jotted down the name on his hand. He vowed to be ready “if the balloon ever goes up.”

Many answers to the question of how new members could help the Oath Keepers were innocuous: “I make videos!” and “Not much but my big mouth! Too old for much else!” People offered to show up at protests, hand out flyers, and post on Facebook. Others provided résumés with skills suited for conflict. A soldier with a U.S. Army email address detailed a background in battlefield intelligence, writing, “I am willing to use any skills you identify as helpful,” and an Iraq War veteran pledged “any talents available to a former infantry team leader.” Still others listed skills in marksmanship, SWAT tactics, interrogation. A Texas businessman offered his ranch “for training or defensive purposes,” and a Michigan cop, retired from the Special Forces, volunteered as a “tactical/political leader when occasion arrives in near future.”

As I pored through the entries, I began to see them as a window into something much larger than the Oath Keepers. Membership in the group was often fleeting—some people had signed up on a whim and forgotten about it. The Oath Keepers did not have 25,000 soldiers at the ready. But the files showed that Rhodes had tapped into a deep current of anxiety, one that could cause a surprisingly large contingent of people with real police and military experience to consider armed political violence. He was like a fisherman who sinks a beacon into the sea at night, drawing his catch toward the light.

The entries dated from 2009 until 2015, not long before the start of Trump’s presidential campaign. I used them as a starting point for conversations with dozens of current and former members. The dominant mood was foreboding. I found people far along in deliberations about the prospect of civil conflict, bracing for it and afflicted by the sense that they were being pushed toward it by forces outside their control. Many said they didn’t want to fight but feared they’d have no choice.

The first person I contacted, in January, was David Solomita, an Iraq War veteran in Florida whose entry said that a police officer had recruited him to the Oath Keepers while he was out to dinner with his wife. I didn’t mention civil war when I emailed, yet he replied, “I want to make this clear, I am a libertarian and was in Iraq when it became a civil war, I want no part of one.”

Later, Solomita said that he’d been an Oath Keeper for a year before leaving because Rhodes “wanted to be at the center of the circus when [civil war] kicked off.” America’s political breakdown, he added, reminded him too much of what he’d seen overseas.

 

Trump just put out the call to arms this week. QAnon, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Molon Labe, Proud Boys, they're all out there.

All bets are off.

StupidiNews!

• Major League Baseball officials say they will allow a limited number of fans to attend World Series games next week, about 11,500 tickets will be made available for each game.
• Climate researchers believe Greenland's ice loss due to global warming will be the worst in 12,000 years, some 36 trillion tons of ice by 2100 at current emissions levels.
• American Airlines and United Airlines say they will start laying off 32,000 employees in the 4th quarter starting today unless Congress provides billions in bailout money.
• Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are taking to the rails on an Amtrak trip across the Rust Belt to stump in five states this week.
• The Trump regime has overruled CDC Director Robert Redfield and could allow full operation of cruise lines by November 1.
  

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorist Problem, Con't

The real story from Trump's debate meltdown last night was his open message to violent white supremacist group Proud Boys: "Stand back and stand by." This is where things could get ugly, folks, and as Alex Yablon writes at Foreign Policy, we've been here before.

Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” President Donald Trump told his supporters in the far-right street-fighting group from his podium at the first 2020 presidential debate. “Somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” Four years into the Trump era, Americans have struggled to habituate themselves to the persistent presence of armed paramilitaries at demonstrations and flashes of lethal political violence. What do these hard men herald for our political life? Are they stormtroopers waiting for Trump’s signal to hasten the transition from autocratic attempt to autocratic breakthrough and the final demise of American democracy, as some liberals fear? Or are they a sideshow of confused, lonely men acting out fantasies with semi-automatic rifles?

Both hyperventilating over paramilitary fantasists and laughing off potential death squads miss the mark. The whiff of putsch may be more pungent than feels comfortable at the moment, but the far-right’s window for an extra-legal takeover remains quite narrow, especially if polls hold and Biden wins by a healthy margin. At the same time, American politics really has been destabilized by political violence, overwhelmingly perpetrated by the extreme right. But if the United States is heading into an era of fear and violence, it won’t be the first time this has happened in a democracy—or even the first time this has happened in America itself.

If proud boys and vigilantes can’t pull off a coordinated drive for power, they may opt for a time-honored approach in democratic politics: the “strategy of tension.” In a paper published this spring, University of Winchester criminologists Matt Clement and Vincenzo Scalia defined the strategy of tension as a political method of “state crime,” designed to produce “a climate of fear within communities. [Strategies of tension] employ deceit, threats, and acts of violence in order to maintain control across society through fear of the consequences of challenging the government of the day.”

The term was coined in Italy during the Years of Lead from the late 1960s to the 1980s, when political violence exploded, with bombings, kidnappings, and failed coups making weekly headlines. Under the strategy of tension, as the left grows more militant, influential, and strident in its demands, the right tries to inflame social tensions rather than defuse them. The violence has a dual purpose, to both suppress and provoke. The right’s aim is to cordon the left off from power by simultaneously intimidating them, eliciting escalation, getting the police to crack down, and using the chaos to manipulate public opinion and political alliances.

Virtually every member of the Western Alliance has had its own years of lead, not only Italy but Britain during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, France as it tried to cling to Algeria and was targeted by its own paramilitary terror campaign, South America in the years of Operation Condor, Mexico’s Dirty War, and so on. America is no exception. The country has been here several times before: Bleeding Kansas during the 1850s, when slave-owners and abolitionists faced off in murderous confrontations; the birth of the first Klan after the Civil War to resist Radical Reconstruction; and the wave of violence that accompanied the rise of the Third Klan during the civil rights movement. Elements of the left from John Brown to the Italian Red Brigades have also pursued violent accelerationist campaigns in pursuit of social change. But only the reactionaries have enjoyed approval from more mainstream sources of political power. Often, they got logistical support as well as material and legal cover from security services.

Clement and Scalia described the strategy of tension as a vicious cycle. State prevention of emancipatory politics leads to dissent, which is in turn repressed and delegitimized, further isolating social movements. With no outlet for their demands, activists pursue more radical confrontations, leading their opponents to justify almost any violence in maintenance of the oppressive regime.

That dynamic is on display in the response to this year’s BLM protests. Once initial police suppression was met with uprisings, the “good guys with guns,” “patriots,” and militias showed up. Ostensibly there to protect businesses and support law enforcement, the armed right has instead brought Chekhov’s AR-15 onto the political stage. The inevitable exchanges of gunfire and vehicular assaults at protests demonstrate, as Christina Cauterucci recently wrote for Slate, the political ethos of “own the libs” has escalated into “kill the libs.”

This is the kind of thing I expect, multiple low-level incidents where people get hurt or killed, all throughout the Biden administration, a slow grind that just has people scared all the time, stressed all the time, on top of the hell 2020 has been.

Some of them I expect will be bad, Oklahoma City bad or worse.

We'll see.

The State Of State TV, Con't

FOX News has eliminated at least one-quarter of its fact-checking desk at its news operation, because the network exists to serve the Trump regime, not facts.

The recent mass layoffs at Fox News—an estimated body count of around 70, amounting to a little less than 3 percent of the cable channel’s workforce—signal what current and former employees describe as the purposeful devaluing of fact-based journalism in favor of right-wing opinion, race-baiting, and conspiracy-mongering at the top-rated, Donald Trump-friendly cable outlet.

Fox News’ PR department used anodyne corporate-speak to characterize the job losses, namely “restructuring various divisions in order to position all of our businesses for ongoing success.” But the layoffs, outside of the hair and makeup department, cut most deeply into the channel’s straight-news operations at Fox News Digital and elsewhere, according to insiders, while protecting the ratings-heavy, revenue-generating domains of Fox & Friends in the morning, and of Trump cheerleaders Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham in primetime.

The outlet’s so-called “Brain Room,” which the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes established as the 24-year-old channel’s fact-checking and research unit, has been especially hard-hit, losing around one-fourth of its 30-person staff along with two supervisors—a virtual frontal lobotomy, according to sources familiar with the cutbacks.

In October 1996, when the late Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes launched the channel for Rupert Murdoch, Ailes’s idea was to create a right-leaning outlet that challenged the perceived liberal bias of the mainstream media—CNN was a juicy target—but also presented a robust straight-news operation to counter the opinion shows. “Fair and balanced,” was Ailes’s mantra—and, while Ailes was the supreme leader, he managed news and opinion programming separately under different executives. In recent years, however, especially after Ailes was forced out in July 2016 amid sexual harassment and discrimination allegations, that distinction has steadily eroded.

Along with the painful layoffs, fired employees—worried about getting new jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic—are being forced to sign severance agreements that include draconian non-disclosure requirements that one current staffer described as shocking, in order to receive their severance packages.

The non-disclosure section of the severance agreement requires laid-off employees to “assign to the Company any and all rights to publicity concerning any matter relating to the issues that resulted in your separation from the Company and/or this Agreement. You agree that you will not publish, contribute to or otherwise facilitate the creation of any story, book or other account relating to the Company or any Released Party. In the event you ever receive any compensation for any publicity, story, book or other disclosure relating in whole or part to those issues, all such compensation shall be immediately given over to the Company.”

Manhattan attorney Michael Willemin, a partner at Wigdor, LLP, which has sued Fox News on behalf of alleged victims of workplace discrimination and sexual abuse, told The Daily Beast: “While it is not terribly uncommon for companies to require individuals to sign releases or NDAs in connection with a severance payment, that does not mean that the practice is morally defensible. These are individuals who have just been terminated in the midst of a global pandemic and one of the worst job markets in history. Many of these individuals need these severance payments simply to make ends meet.”

 

It's only after the death of Roger Ailes that FOX News has transformed into the Trump Regime State TV network that it always was at heart. It's nothing but disinformation and entertainment for Trump's violent white supremacist base, and they will loudly be calling for deadly violence against Biden voters in the weeks and months ahead.

 

Biden, His Time, Con't

With five weeks to go, the enemy for Trump is now the clock more than Joe Biden. Trump is now in danger of losing his second-tier must-win states of Ohio and Iowa. Amy Walter at Cook Political Report:

One big reason for Trump's continued struggle in these states is his narrowing margins with white, working-class voters.

Let's start with Iowa.

Three public polls have come out in the last couple of weeks.

• The Des Moines Register showed the race a dead heat at 47 percent to 47 percent.
• The New York Times/Siena College survey had Biden up by three points, 45 percent to 42 percent.
• The Monmouth University poll found Trump with a healthier six-point lead, 50 percent to 44 percent).

The New York Times/Siena College poll (September 16-22) found Trump leading Biden among white, non-college voters by just three-points (44 to 41 percent) — a 20 point drop from 2016. Biden's 41 percent is a six-point improvement on Clinton's showing from 2016.

The Des Moines Register survey (September 14-17), found Biden leading among white, non-college women by 19 points (56 percent to 37 percent), while Trump held a huge 32-point lead with white, non-college men (64 percent to 31 percent). This translates, roughly, to a 7-8 point lead for Trump with these voters, a 14-15 point drop from 2016.

The Monmouth poll (September 18-20), finds Trump only slightly underperforming his 2016 showing with white, non-college voters, leading Biden by 17 points (56 percent to 39 percent); a six-point drop from 2016.

However, one bit of good news for the president in Iowa is that his job approval rating is in the 48-49 percent range. While that's not off-the-charts good, it's much higher than his national average of 42-43 percent and much better than what we've seen in other battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania or Arizona. The Des Moines Register and Monmouth polls also find Trump improving in both vote share and favorability since earlier this summer.

In Ohio, a new Fox News poll (September 20-23) finds Trump slipping even further behind than he was this summer. In late May-early June, Trump trailed Biden by two points (43-45 percent). This most recent poll finds him five points back — 45 to 50 percent.

Trump is basically no better off today in the September Quinnipiac survey (September 17-21), than he was back in mid-June. Back in June, Trump trailed Biden by one-point (46-45 percent). In mid-September, the race was basically in the same place — 48 percent Biden to 47 percent for Trump.

In both polls, Trump is underperforming his 2016 vote among white, non-college voters by 11 to 16 points.

But, Trump's troubles in the state extends into suburban areas that at one time looked impervious to Democratic incursion. Trump carried white, college-educated voters by one-point (47-46 percent) in 2016. And, in 2017-2018, Democrats were unable to flip hotly contested races in suburban Columbus and Cincinnati.

Today, however, even GOPers concede that Rep. Steve Chabot, who represents the suburban Cincinnati 1st CD is in serious danger this year. And, Trump is now trailing among white, college-educated voters anywhere from eight to 11 points in the most recent polls.

Another way to judge the competitiveness of a state, of course, is to check on the resources the campaigns and their allies are investing (or not) into it.

For the Biden campaign, neither state is a "tipping point;" they don't "need" to win either to get to 270 Electoral Votes. Our latest ratings show Biden with an advantage in enough states (and CD's) to get him to 290, without Ohio or Iowa. But, Biden's huge cash hauls over the summer — the former Vice President outraised Trump in August by more than $150M and had more $60M more in cash on hand than Trump — gives Biden the flexibility to spend some money in 'reach' states.

The Trump campaign can't win without either state. But, given Biden's superior financial advantage, they also have to be more judicious with where they spend their money. That means making sure that must-win states like North Carolina and Florida are well-funded.

 

This is exactly the type of advantage Biden's fundraising haul supplies him: he can hit Trump hard in Ohio and Iowa and force Trump to choose between them and NC/Florida/Georgia with Trump's more limited resources when Trump needs all five states and then some in order to win.  Biden can now strike at ten or twelve states in the final five weeks, he has the money to go after Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and Georgia while still keeping up the pressure in PA, WI, MI, and Arizona and the big battlegrounds of NC and Florida.

Trump is now on the defensive in all those states, all ten he won in 2016.  He may not even win three of them this time around.

 

Shawna Jensen is among former Donald Trump supporters who are voting for Democrat Joe Biden this year, breaking ranks with family, friends and, in many cases, a lifelong political affiliation. They say it’s caused them anguish, both to personal relationships and their own identity. They wanted change and disruption, until they found out what that actually looked like under a President Trump. 

Trump’s case for reelection rests almost solely on the intensity of support from those who backed him four years ago. Unlike other modern presidents, he has done little to try to expand his base, and there’s no evidence that he has. So he cannot afford to lose many voters like Jensen. 

It’s unclear how many voters like Jensen are out there — white, middle-class people who are pro-gun and anti-abortion rights, solid Republicans in most conventional ways — and how they will affect the election’s outcome. Voters like Jensen could be only a slice of the electorate, but they still represent a flashing caution sign for the president. 

Trump’s support among Republicans has been stable throughout his time in office. For all those voters repelled by Trump, there are diehard legions who remain solidly with him because they believe he honored his campaign promises, shows strengths and has presided over an economy that was flourishing before the pandemic. 

In a tight race — especially in swing states — those who are abandoning Trump could make a difference. 

In two dozen interviews with voters in three traditional swing states and Texas, people discussed why they aren’t voting for him again and what it feels like to leave behind a political allegiance that was part of their personal identity. 

“Everything that I thought I knew doesn’t exist anymore,” said 22-year-old Zach Berly, of North Carolina, who was active in high school and college Republican clubs and enthusiastically cast his first presidential ballot for Trump in 2016 but won’t be voting for him in November. “There has to be another solution. I don’t even know what I am.” 

The bedrock of Trump’s America is white voters who are 45 or older, and they are largely solidly with him, especially in rural areas. According to a Pew Research Center study, the 2018 elections showed a decline in support for Republicans in suburban areas, and if that is true in 2020, it provides an opening for Biden. 

“Joe Biden’s a family man and so am I, and that’s how I’m connecting with him,” said Jensen. “He loves his kids and his wife, you can tell it. For me, he’s the safer of the two candidates. And he doesn’t make fun of people."

 

People bought the Trump snake oil because they thought he was worth it. He was a con man and a grifter and they resent it. They're leaving him because he failed to make their lives better.

 

But nearly all are okay with his racism.

And even should Trump lose, we still have to deal with it, and with them.

StupidiNews!

• Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is forcing a Senate vote on a bill that would guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing conditions if the Supreme Court strikes down the ACA.
• Disney Parks says the division will cut 28,000 US jobs due to COVID-19 restrictions, blaming state governments for reducing park capacity for public health reasons.
• India's total COVID-19 cases now top 6.2 million as the pandemic is raging throughout the subcontinent, deaths from the virus are approaching 100,000 and rising.
• A federal judge has set a contempt hearing for Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross over Ross's decision to end Census Bureau activities on Monday, weeks ahead of a court-imposed Oct. 31 date.
• Russia says it will release all early trial data of its COVID-19 vaccine in the weeks ahead in order to "give people the opportunity to protect themselves" from the virus...and to help Donald Trump.
  

Last Call For The Most Taxing Of Explanations, Con't

The Trump Tax Saga continues, this time with the NY Times zeroing in on Trump's years on NBC's "The Apprentice" and Trump monetizing his fame as a businessman while being hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

 

By analyzing the tax records, The New York Times was able to place a value on Mr. Trump’s celebrity. While the returns show that he earned some $197 million directly from “The Apprentice” over 16 years — roughly in line with what he has claimed — they also reveal that an additional $230 million flowed from the fame associated with it.

The show’s big ratings meant that everyone wanted a piece of the Trump brand, and he grabbed at the opportunity to rent it out. There was $500,000 to pitch Double Stuf Oreos, another half-million to sell Domino’s Pizza and $850,000 to push laundry detergent.

There were seven-figure licensing deals with hotel builders, some with murky backgrounds, in former Soviet republics and other developing countries. And there were schemes that exploited misplaced trust in the TV version of Mr. Trump, who, off camera, peddled worthless get-rich-quick nostrums like “Donald Trump Way to Wealth” seminars that promised initiation into “the secrets and strategies that have made Donald Trump a billionaire.”

Just as, years before, the money Mr. Trump secretly received from his father allowed him to assemble a wobbly collection of Atlantic City casinos and other disparate enterprises that then collapsed around him, the new influx of cash helped finance a buying spree that saw him snap up golf resorts, a business not known for easy profits. Indeed, the tax records show that his golf properties have been hemorrhaging millions of dollars for years.

In response to a request for comment, a White House spokesman, Judd Deere, did not dispute any specific facts. Instead, he delivered a broad attack, calling the article “fake news” and “yet another politically motivated hit piece full of inaccurate smears” appearing “before a presidential debate.”

Unlocking the mysteries of Mr. Trump’s wealth has been attempted many times with varying degrees of success — an exercise made difficult by the opaque nature of his businesses, his penchant for exaggerations and lies, and his willingness to threaten or sue those who question his rosy narratives. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to maintain secrecy, most notably his refusal to honor 40 years of presidential tradition and release his tax returns.

This article is based on an examination of data from those returns, which include personal and business tax filings for Mr. Trump and his companies spanning more than two decades. Every dollar is disclosed for the first time: $8,768,330 paid to him by ACN, a multilevel marketing company that was accused of taking advantage of vulnerable investors; $50,000 from the Lifetime channel for a “juicy nighttime soap” that never materialized; $5,026 in net income from a short-lived mortgage business; and $15,286,244 from licensing his name to a line of mattresses.

In addition, it draws on interviews and previously unreported material from other sources, including hundreds of internal documents from Bayrock Group, an influential early licensing partner whose ties to Russia would come back to haunt the president as questions swirled about his own dealings there.

Together, the new information provides the most authoritative look yet at a critical period in Mr. Trump’s business career that laid the foundation, and provided something of a preview, of his personality-based and fact-bending presidency.

 

The argument from the right here is that Trump simply plays the game better than anyone else on the planet, that's why he's in the Oval Office. But if you don't think the tens of millions of Americans who lost their jobs this year are wondering how it's fair that "billionaire" Trump paid $750 in taxes when they paid thousands and more, then you're kidding yourself.

Trump has been spouting lies about middle class prosperity for years right now, and the fact of the matter is he's gaming the system, and signed a bill into law that allowed him to game the system even more at our expense.

Breonna Taylor's Life Mattered, Con't

In a highly unusual move, one of the grand jurors in the Breonna Taylor case has filed a lawsuit to release the grand jury transcript and recordings of proceedings. Daniel Cameron's office says it will comply.

 

A juror in the Breonna Taylor case contends that the Kentucky attorney general misrepresented the grand jury’s deliberations and failed to offer the panel the option of indicting the two officers who fatally shot the young woman, according to the juror’s lawyer.

The unnamed juror filed a court motion on Monday seeking the release of last week’s transcripts and permission from a judge to speak publicly to set the record straight. Hours later, the office of Attorney General Daniel Cameron granted both requests, saying that the juror is free to speak and that recordings of the session will be made public.

The grand jury did not indict the two white officers who killed Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, after one officer was shot by her boyfriend. It charged a third officer whose bullets entered a neighbor’s apartment after missing Ms. Taylor with the lesser felony of wanton endangerment.

“This is something where the juror is not seeking any fame, any acclaim, any money,” said Kevin M. Glogower, the juror’s lawyer.

The lawyer said the juror came to him last week feeling anxious after Mr. Cameron repeatedly said at a news conference that the law did not permit him to charge Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor on March 13 — and that the jury had agreed with him.

“While there are six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law, these charges are not applicable to the facts before us because our investigation showed — and the grand jury agreed — that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in the return of deadly fire after having been fired upon,” Mr. Cameron said, one of several moments in the news conference where he emphasized such a consensus.

 

As I said yesterday, the evidence appears to support the theory that Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron lied when he told reporters that the 9mm bullet that hit Mattingly in the leg could not have been fired by any other gun than the one Taylor's boyfriend was using, as he had the only 9mm weapon present at the scene.

 

But the ballistics report says that Hankinson had been issued a 9mm Glock by the LMPD. It was the bullet that hit Mattingly that led to the officers returning fire, fearing for their lives.

If the bullet could have come from Hankinson's Glock 9mm however, and the grand jury was never told about it, well..Cameron is in a lot of trouble.

Gov. Beshear has called for the transcripts and recording of the grand jury proceedings, but if one of the grand jurors themselves is suing to make that happen, then Cameron is possibly in unbelievable amounts of trouble here. Prosecutorial misconduct is a thing, folks. The kind of thing that gets you disbarred.

Let's not forget that Beshear was Kentucky's previous Attorney General too. He knows what this means.

This case is far from over.

Breonna Taylor's life mattered.

It's About Suppression, Con't

 Good morning.

The Trump campaign used Steve Bannon's Cambridge Analytica company to profile and target 3.5 million Black voters in 2016 to stop them from voting for Hillary Clinton, according to UK Channel 4 News.

Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters.

It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.

Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence amounted to a new form of voter “suppression” and called on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has never been made public.

The ‘Deterrence’ project can be revealed after Channel 4 News obtained the database used by Trump’s digital campaign team – credited with helping deliver his shock victory to become president four years ago.

Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data – making it one of the biggest leaks in history.

It reveals not only the huge amounts of data held on every individual voter, but how that data was used and manipulated by models and algorithms.

In 16 key battleground states, millions of Americans were separated by an algorithm into one of eight categories, also described as ‘audiences’, so they could then be targeted with tailored ads on Facebook and other platforms.

One of the categories was named ‘Deterrence’, which was later described publicly by Trump’s chief data scientist as containing people that the campaign “hope don’t show up to vote”.

Analysis by Channel 4 News shows Black Americans – historically a community targeted with voter suppression tactics – were disproportionately marked ‘Deterrence’ by the 2016 campaign.

In total, 3.5 million Black Americans were marked ‘Deterrence’.

In Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the ‘Deterrence’ category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population but were 46% of ‘Deterrence’. In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population but made up 17% of ‘Deterrence’.

The disproportionate categorising of Black Americans for ‘Deterrence’ is seen across the US. Overall, people of colour labelled as Black, Hispanic, Asian and ‘Other’ groups made up 54% of the ‘Deterrence’ category. In contrast, other categories of voters the campaign wished to attract were overwhelmingly white.

The 2016 campaign preceded the first fall in Black turnout in 20 years and allowed Donald Trump to take shock victories in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan by wafer-thin margins, reaching the White House despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s digital campaign, called ‘Project Alamo’ and based in San Antonio, Texas, involved a team from the now defunct British company Cambridge Analytica, working with a team from the Republican National Committee. Two senior members of the Cambridge Analytica team are working on the Trump 2020 campaign.

Cambridge Analytica collapsed after investigations by Channel 4 News, The Observer and the New York Times in 2018.

 

We knew Cambridge Analytica was doing this back in 2017. The new information is that they were working directly with the Trump campaign and with Facebook to build these voter profiles of 200 million Americans and targeting them with such pinpoint accuracy that Trump won exactly the states he needed by exactly the margins he needed.

And now we know precisely what the purpose of those profiles were: to categorize tens of million of Americans in order to find and attract the voters they needed with Facebook and social media, and suppress those they needed to stay home in key states with targeted ads.

 

Here's the Channel 4 report.

 

 

They nailed the entire electorate. They divided us like never before. They used this and voter ID laws and they got away with it. They had our number, all 200 million of us, and bought an election.

 

Here's the thing though. For this deterrence plan to work, and it did, Black turnout was cut by 19% overall in PA, MI, WI and OH, for this to have worked at all, it had to be close enough for them to cheat.

It never should have been close enough for them to do so.

But Trump voters made it so.