California Goes Viral, Con't

Even if Joe Biden is eventually declared President after all the Trump legal tomfoolery, even after another two-and-a-half months of Trump doing scorched earth damage in the wake of a loss, if California is any example, Trump's federal judges (and Supreme Court!) will be blocking Democratic state and national executive orders for years, making getting anything done to fix the mess we're in almost impossible.

A Northern California county judge on Monday preliminarily ordered Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop issuing directives related to the coronavirus that might interfere with state law.

Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman tentatively ruled that one of the dozens of executive orders Newsom has issued overstepped his authority and impinged on the state Legislature.

She more broadly barred him “from exercising any power under the California Emergency Services Act which amends, alters, or changes existing statutory law or makes new statutory law or legislative policy.”

It’s the second time a judge in the same county has reached the same conclusion, which runs counter to other state and federal court decisions backing the governor’s emergency powers. An appeals court quickly stayed the earlier order in June.

Heckman’s decision will become final in 10 days unless Newsom’s attorneys can raise new challenges. Newsom did not immediately comment or say if he will appeal.

The case centers on a single Newsom executive order in June requiring election officials to establish hundreds of locations statewide where voters can cast ballots in the November election. But lawmakers subsequently approved the same requirement, and the judge’s decision will have no effect on Tuesday’s election.

She acted in a lawsuit brought by Republican Assemblymen James Gallagher and Kevin Kiley, who said Newsom, a Democrat, was single-handedly overriding state laws in the name of keeping Californians safe.

“This is a victory for separation of powers,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. Newsom “has continued to create and change state law without public input and without the deliberative process provided by the Legislature.”

Heckman wrote in a nine-page decision that the California Emergency Services Act “does not permit the Governor to amend statutes or make new statutes. The Governor does not have the power or authority to assume the Legislature’s role of creating legislative policy and enactments.”

Newsom used his emergency powers to virtually shut down the state and its economy in the early weeks of the pandemic.

“Nobody disputes that there are actions that should be taken to keep people safe during an emergency,” the lawmakers said. “But that doesn’t mean that we put our Constitution and free society on hold by centralizing all power in the hands of one man.”

 

After decades of the "unitary executive" legal principle, Republicans are now arguing that Governors have no powers, and that everything rests with state legislatures...which happened to be controlled by Republicans in many cases.  California's is not, but blocking Newsom's orders, as was the attempted case here in Kentucky a few months ago, is the point. 

Even if they are temporary, it disrupts the process and undermines authority. If Republicans cannot rule, Trump's judges will make sure the country remains ungovernable, even in deep blue California.

 

Europe's Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Multiple gunmen opened fire Tuesday in Vienna, attacking in several locations around the center of the city, as authorities continue to hunt the attackers in what Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is calling "a repulsive terror attack".

Gunmen armed with rifles have opened fire in six different locations in central Vienna, killing three people and wounding several more, police say.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called it a "repulsive terror attack" and said one gunman was also killed.

Police were searching for at least one attacker who was still at large, the interior minister said.

The shootings took place near Vienna's central synagogue but it is not yet clear if that was the target.

The city's police chief said two men and a woman were killed. At least a dozen other people were wounded, officials said.

The attack happened just hours before Austria imposed new national restrictions to try to stem rising cases of coronavirus. Many people were out enjoying bars and restaurants which are now closed until the end of November.

European leaders strongly condemned the shooting. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "deeply shocked by the terrible attacks".

Police said the incident began at about 20:00 (19:00 GMT) on Monday, near the Seitenstettengasse synagogue, when a heavily armed man opened fire on people outside cafes and restaurants.

Members of the special forces quickly arrived at the scene. One policeman suffered a gunshot wound before other officers shot the perpetrator, who was armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol and a machete.

Jewish community leader Oskar Deutsch tweeted that the synagogue was closed at the time the attack began.

 

Just remember that as bad as things are here in the US, Europe has seen multiple terrorist attacks like this in the last several years, and there's no indication that the EU is dealing with their right-wing white supremacist fascism problem any better than the United States is, especially during a resurgent pandemic.

StupidiNews, Election Day Edition!

• It's Election Day here in America. If you're heading to the polls today, be safe, mask up, and check vote.org to double-check your polling place location.
• If anyone tries to stop you from voting, know your rights. Call 1-866-687-8683 to reach the Election Protection Hotline.
• Get out there and vote!
  

Last Call For Zandar's Final Map

In the end, I agree with Charlie Cook. Trump is out of time, Biden's lead is too big, Trump would have to run the table on too many states, and the only real question is how big Biden's victory margin will be.

On a hundred-odd Zoom meetings, webinars, and conference call speeches that I’ve participated in over the past two months, virtual attendees continue to raise the possibility of a contested presidential election, even though the chances of that have been getting smaller all the time. Every day that Trump remains behind in the polls, outspent badly and with the early vote gushing in, the cone of uncertainty narrows, and the odds of such an upset goes down.

Joe Biden’s path to 270 electoral votes seems pretty straightforward: Hold all 20 states (plus the District of Columbia) that Hillary Clinton carried four years ago, which total 232 electoral votes, just 38 short of the majority threshold of 270. Then win each of the three states that Clinton lost by eight-tenths of a point or less: Michigan (0.2 percentage points) Pennsylvania (0.7), and Wisconsin (0.8). That gives him 278 electoral votes, eight more than needed. Biden will likely also carry two congressional districts that eluded Clinton in 2016, Nebraska’s 2nd District and Maine’s 2nd, giving him 280 electoral votes. That would represent a “skinny” Biden win.

A big Biden win would bring in Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina, and might also include one or two states from the next tier, mostly likely Georgia or Iowa, although don’t count out Ohio or Texas. Generally speaking, Trump is underperforming his 2016 pace by 3 to 8 points, depending upon the state or district.

The RealClearPolitics average of national polls pegs Biden’s lead at 7.4 points, 51.1 to 43.7 percent. But that’s a less discriminating measure, including as it does some mediocre surveys, some that seemed congenitally slanted toward one side or the other, and some that would be better utilized lining hamster cages. The FiveThirtyEight modeled average of national polls, which is more selective than the RCP average but still includes some surveys that I consider rather sketchy, puts the Biden lead at 8.8 points, 52 to 43.2 percent.

I believe his actual lead is more like 9 or 10 points, based on the higher-quality, live-telephone-interview national polls conducted since the first debate, as well as the gold standard of online polling, the Pew Research Center’s mammoth poll of 11,929 voters released two weeks ago.

Any way you slice it, these are pretty good leads, considerably higher than the 3.2-point national margin that Hillary Clinton had over Trump in the RCP average on Oct. 29, 2016. When all the votes were counted, the margin ended up being 2.1 percent.

If I had to give you a map, and I do, frankly, it would look like this.

305-233 Biden.  And I think I might be underestimating GA, FL, OH, and TX.

God I hope I'm right.

You're Vlad Marugov, The Sausage King Of Moscow?

Hey, it's not election news for once as the Sausage King of Moscow has been assassinated by crossbow bolt. Nope, serious. May even have not been Putin's fault, either.

 

A Russian oligarch, nicknamed The Sausage King, has been murdered with a crossbow, investigators say.

Vladimir Marugov and his partner were in an outdoor sauna when they were attacked, reportedly by two masked assailants.

The woman managed to escape through the window and call the police.

Detectives found the body of Mr Marugov, who owned some of Russia's largest meat-processing plants, in the sauna with a crossbow next to it.

The attack happened at Mr Marugov's countryside estate, about 40km (25 miles) outside the capital, Moscow, early on Monday morning, Russia's Investigative Committee (similar to the FBI in the US) reported.

It did not name the man, but local media identified him as Mr Marugov, the owner of the Ozyorsky and Meat Empire sausage factories.

The intruders demanded cash from Mr Marugov, before fleeing in a car, the Investigative Committee said.

The getaway car was later recovered on the outskirts of the town of Istra, outside Moscow.

 

This is twenty, thirty minutes of a good Guy Ritchie film right here.  Somebody get me Jason Statham, Peter Stormare, Rooney Mara and Dave Bautista.

Also, just kidding, everything having to do with Russian oligarchs dying is Putin's fault.

Trump Goes Viral And Fauci Goes Off

Leading US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci is warning of a dire several months ahead as Donald Trump continues to lie to America about COVID-19 at his rallies, with just hours to go before Election Day. And for the first time, Fauci is now openly blaming Trump for the country's failures in controlling the pandemic.

Fauci, who once took a starring role in the response and briefed the president almost every day as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, described a disjointed response as cases surge. Several current and former senior administration officials said the White House is almost entirely focused on a vaccine, even though experts warn it is unlikely to be a silver bullet that ends the pandemic immediately since it will take months under the best of circumstances to inoculate tens of millions of people to achieve herd immunity.

Officials told governors on a call Friday that they hoped to begin distributing a vaccine by the end of the year, giving some specific guidance on how states would receive their first doses. Fauci focused on the rise in cases, according to people familiar with the call.

Fauci said the White House coronavirus task force meets less frequently and has far less influence as the president and his top advisers have focused on reopening the country. “Right now, the public health aspect of the task force has diminished greatly,” he said.

Fauci said he and Deborah Birx, coronavirus task force coordinator, no longer have regular access to the president and he has not spoken to Trump since early October. “The last time I spoke to the president was not about any policy; it was when he was recovering in Walter Reed, he called me up,” he said. Fauci said he phones into meetings of other staffers but largely avoids the West Wing because “of all the infections there.”

He also lamented that Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist and Trump’s favored pandemic adviser, who advocates letting the virus spread among young healthy people and reopening the country without restrictions, is the only medical adviser the president regularly meets with.

“I have real problems with that guy,” Fauci said of Atlas. “He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in. He keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Fauci said he actually appreciated chief of staff Mark Meadows saying last weekend on CNN that the administration was not going to control the pandemic. “I tip my hat to him for admitting the strategy,” he said. “He is straightforward in telling you what’s on his mind. I commend him for that.”

 

At this point, don't be surprised if Fauci is silenced completely or even fired after the election. (Trump even suggested he would do so "a few days after the election" at one of his rallies last night.)

At one point during the interview, Fauci said he needed to be careful with his words because he would be blocked from doing appearances in the future.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, offered blistering criticism of Fauci for his comments in a statement to The Washington Post on Saturday. Deere said Fauci “knows the risks [from the coronavirus] today are dramatically lower than they were only a few months ago.”

“It’s unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force and someone who has praised President Trump’s actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics,” Deere said. “As a member of the Task Force, Dr. Fauci has a duty to express concerns or push for a change in strategy, but he’s not done that, instead choosing to criticize the President in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the President’s opponent — exactly what the American people have come to expect from The Swamp.”

Deere added that the president “always put the well-being of the American people first,” citing his decision to cut off travel from China, his early shutdown of the country and his mobilization of the private sector to deliver critical supplies and develop treatments and vaccines.

 

It's far from the first time the Trump regime has gone after Fauci, but this is definitely the first time that the good doctor has taken a swing or three back like this. Should Trump win a second term, Fauci's name is almost certainly at the top of the list of Trump's mass loyalty purge.

President Donald Trump and his top aides are planning a huge overhaul of his Cabinet if he wins a second term, scuttling officials in key health-related and intelligence jobs who Trump views as disloyal, slow-acting or naysayers.

The shift would amount to a purge of any Cabinet member who has crossed the president, refused to mount investigations he has demanded, or urged him to take a different, more strict tack on the coronavirus response.

The evictions could run the gamut from senior health officials to much of the national security leadership. Already, the White House and administration officials have started to vet names of health care experts who could take over the agencies running many elements of the government’s pandemic response and overseeing the country’s health insurance system, according to two Republicans close to the White House. And the president is eying a remake of leadership at the FBI, CIA and Pentagon, exasperated with what he perceives as unwillingness to investigate his preferred subjects or take on the government’s “deep state.”

This personnel overhaul of the Trump Cabinet at the start of a second term would mirror the turnover his administration has already experienced during his first four years. Of the 23 Cabinet-level posts in the Trump White House, only seven officials lasted all four years. Many, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, had public and contentious departures. And it would represent a fully unencumbered Trump, no longer constrained by political considerations or pushback from Congress.

“I can only imagine the score-settling Trump would undertake if he won,” said one Republican close to the White House about the potential Cabinet shakeup.

235,000 Americans and counting are already dead, and hundreds of thousands more will follow in the weeks and months ahead, regardless of who wins the election. Trump will spend his final days in power making those who chose to vote him out of office suffer, win or lose.

So, if you're somehow still on the fence over your vote on Tuesday, for the love of God, vote for Biden.

Four more years of Trump will kill millions of us.

 

StupidiNews!

• Trump regime officials are planning to put up "non-salable fencing" around a four-block area surrounding the White House, the same fencing used earlier this year during protests.
• A Georgia Democratic campaign rally was moved to a Zoom virtual event after Georgia militia Trump supporters threatened the rally with armed violence.
• DC Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered the US Postal Service to "deliver every possible ballot" to election offices by Tuesday's cutoff time.
• The Trump regime is expected to announce a 180-day moratorium on asylum entries due to "COVID-19 concerns" this week as the White House begins a new crackdown on immigration.
• Tropical Storm Eta is the 28th named storm in 2020, tying 2005's Atlantic record, and is expected to reach Category 1 hurricane strength on Monday before hitting the western Yucatan Peninsula.

Last Call For Bus, Biden Bus

In a preview of the events to come, the Biden campaign has canceled several events in Texas this weekend after Trump cultists ambushed a Biden campaign bus in Texas and tried to force it off Interstate 35.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into a Friday incident in which a group of Trump supporters, driving trucks and waving Trump flags, surrounded and followed a Biden campaign bus as it drove up I-35 in Hays County, a law enforcement official confirmed to The Texas Tribune Saturday.

The confrontation, captured on video, featured at least one minor collision and led to Texas Democrats canceling three scheduled campaign events on Friday. The campaign officials cited “safety concerns” for the cancellations.

The highway skirmish came as Democrats close ground in a state that is polling like a potential battleground in the race for president. Recent polls indicate the presidential race in Texas between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden is tight, with some national prognosticators calling it a “toss-up.”

“Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas [Friday] instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” said Tariq Thowfeek, Texas communications director for the Biden campaign.

On Saturday night, Trump tweeted a video of the Trump supporters following the Biden bus saying, “I LOVE TEXAS!”

When reached for comment, the Texas GOP Chairman Allen West dismissed questions regarding the incident. “It is more fake news and propaganda. Prepare to lose ... stop bothering me,” West said in a statement.

The bus tour was separate from vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ visit to the state Friday.

Texas Congressional candidate and former state senator Wendy Davis was on the Biden bus at the time, according to multiple sources, including U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Travis County Democratic Party Chair Katie Naranjo, and a now-deleted tweet from the Biden Operations Director for Texas, David Gins. A spokesperson for Davis declined to comment.

The tour, which started on Wednesday in Amarillo and went through East Texas, the Gulf Coast, along the Texas-Mexico border, and Central Texas faced protests of varying sizes along the way.

Friday’s campaign events started with a small gathering in Laredo that was met with few protesters. From there, staffers drove to San Antonio. Around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, a social media user using the hashtag #TrumpTrainTexas posted on Twitter, “Trolling is FUN.” The user called for other Trump supporters to “escort the Biden [bus] coming through San Antonio.” 

 

Should Trump lose, and the odds are looking very much like he will, expect a lot more violence like this. It's only the beginning as this infected boil is lanced this week.  There will almost certainly be far more intimidation by Trump cultists, some of them law enforcement, in an effort to hurt Democrats over the next 48 hours.

And should it become clear that Trump is going down in flames, the rest of the country may very well follow.

Be careful this week at the very least. Between the virus and the cultists, America is not safe by any measure right now.

Boris Finally Locks It Down

As COVID-19 rips through the European Union, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a 30-day national lockdown starting on Thursday as UK total cases now top 1 million.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday announced a new month-long lockdown for England after being warned that without tough action a resurgent coronavirus outbreak will overwhelm hospitals in weeks.

On the day the U.K. passed 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, Johnson made a sudden about-face and confirmed that stringent restrictions on business and daily life would begin Thursday and last until Dec. 2.

He said at a televised news conference that “no responsible prime minister” could ignore the grim figures.

“Unless we act, we could see deaths in this country running at several thousand a day,” said Johnson, who was hospitalized earlier this year for a serious case of COVID-19.

Under the new restrictions, bars and restaurants can only offer take-out, non-essential shops must close and people will only be able to leave home for a short list of reasons including exercise. Activities ranging from haircuts to foreign holidays must once again be put on hold.

Unlike during the U.K.’s first three-month lockdown earlier this year, schools, universities, construction sites and manufacturing businesses will stay open.

As in other European countries, virus cases in the U.K. began to climb after lockdown measures were eased in the summer and people began to return to workplaces, schools, universities and social life. The Office for National Statistics estimated Friday that 1 in 100 people in England, well over half a million, had the virus in the week to Oct. 23.

Johnson had hoped a set of regional restrictions introduced earlier in October would be enough to push numbers down. But government scientific advisers predict that on the outbreak’s current trajectory, demand for hospital beds will exceed capacity by the first week of December, even if temporary hospitals set up during the first peak of the virus are reopened.

The scientists warned COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths could soon surpass the levels seen at the outbreak’s spring peak, when daily deaths topped 1,000. The government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said the mortality rate had “potential to be twice as bad, if not more” than it was during the pandemic’s first European wave, if nothing was done.

As European countries such as France, Germany and Belgium in imposing a second lockdown amid surging caseloads, it looked inevitable that Johnson would have to follow.

 

Boris Johnson is finally doing the right thing.

 

There will be no lockdowns here in the US however. Trump will openly punish states that try it, and we've already had kidnap and assassination plots against Democratic governors, and there's always the Supreme Court to block them.

 

Expect another 100,000 deaths between now and Inauguration Day on Trump's butcher's bill.

Sunday Long Read: Reciting The Lordstown's Prayer

Our Election Day Sunday Long Read comes to us from Steven Greenhouse at The Guardian as he profiles Lordstown, Ohio and the voters there facing a historic choice. Two years after GM closed its major Chevy Cruze plant in Lordstown, four years after Donald Trump won Ohio by eight points based on his promises to keep the auto plants and steel plants open and jobs pouring in, the people of the Mahoning Valley are considering that Trump may have screwed them over and left them and the state holding the bag. 

Before Covid-19 hit, Trisha Amato spent her weekdays behind a modest, ebony-colored desk, running the “transition center” that helps laid-off General Motors workers pick up the shards of their lives. GM announced it was closing its mammoth plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in November 2018 and ever since Amato has been ladling out advice to the 1,700 laid-off workers on such matters as how to obtain jobless benefits and how to qualify for government assistance to pay for college courses.

The GM plant, the size of more than 100 football fields, had long been the heart of Lordstown – as recently as 2016, it employed 4,500 workers, and in its 53-year history, it produced 16m vehicles. Built alongside I-80, the hulking plant has long been a monument to America’s industrial might, or perhaps one should say its fading industrial might.

Deep-voiced, with long, auburn hair and broad shoulders – she, too, had worked at the plant – Amato has problems of her own, saying that she can no longer afford health insurance for herself and her two daughters on her transition center salary. Amato, who is divorced, felt betrayed when GM said it would shut the plant – the company had received $60m in state subsidies, and had promised in return to keep the plant open through 2027.

Many of the GM workers were also angry at Donald Trump. During the 2016 campaign, he repeatedly proclaimed that he would make American manufacturing great again and would bring back jobs that had gone overseas. That message resonated in Lordstown and nearby Youngstown, part of the Mahoning Valley area that has been dragged down for decades by one factory and steel mill closing after another. Trump’s repeated promise to bring back factory jobs played well not only in Ohio, but also in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, helping win over many blue-collar voters, who were key to his narrow victories in those states. Blue-collar workers in those states could again play a decisive role in this year’s election, with many still supporting Trump, but some souring on him – perhaps enough to flip those states to Joe Biden.

In July 2017, Trump spoke in Youngstown and told the crowd that on his way in from the airport, he had seen the carcasses of too many factories and mills. He bemoaned Ohio’s loss of manufacturing jobs, but then boldly assured the crowd: “They’re all coming back!” He next told his audience, many of them workers worried about plant closings: “Don’t move! Don’t sell your house!”

Laid-off GM Lordstown workers still rail about that speech. Many moved to other cities to find work; many lost money selling their homes. “Some of my hardest days of the last few years came when everybody left,” Amato told me. “They had to sell their houses.” Hundreds of longtime Lordstown workers moved to take jobs at GM plants in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas – all so that they could continue receiving good United Auto Workers (UAW) wages (around $30 an hour) and accrue additional years toward their pensions. Many in this diaspora make the four- to 10-hour drive back to the Mahoning Valley once or twice each month to visit their families.

“It’s all just a mess,” said Amato. “The ones who left, they’re angry.” GM offered to transfer Amato to its plant in Wentzville, Missouri, but she turned it down because her 19-year-old daughter was in high school and her 79-year-old father was ailing.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump had considerable support in the Lordstown plant even though surrounding Trumbull County is traditionally a Democratic stronghold and even though UAW members, stretching back to Franklin Roosevelt’s time, have tilted heavily Democratic. Union officials estimate that 30 to 40% of Lordstown’s workers voted for Trump. “They felt he was the lesser of two evils,” Amato said. The sentiment was, “Let’s not have a lifetime politician in there. Let’s get some change.”

“Since so many of the steel mills closed, there isn’t much here economically,” Amato added. “They were hoping or praying that Trump would bring something here.” The workers were wowed, she said, by his promises to bring back jobs and his being a seemingly successful businessman.

Asked whom she supported in 2016, Amato told me: “I backed Trump,” but she followed that with a quick, nervous laugh. “I thought he stood for more of what I stood for.”

She, too, felt that Trump was the lesser of two evils. Hillary Clinton was an excellent first lady, she said, but to her mind, Clinton, by 2016, had become yet another career politician. “She just changed,” Amato said. “It comes down to character, and I wanted to believe Trump has a better character.”

Amato admits that she woefully misjudged Trump. “After he was elected, he really opened his mouth. He started tweeting and saying things that I feel are crazy. He doesn’t know when to stop.”

Upset at herself for backing Trump, she said: “I feel like I’m living in a reality TV show.” She added: “Trump, he’s a clown.”

She had thought it would be good to have a businessman as president. “But maybe he’s not such a good businessman,” she acknowledged, pointing to his numerous bankruptcies. “He doesn’t understand where the blue-collar workers are coming from. I don’t think any of the big politicians understand that. Trump, especially, doesn’t understand what it is to struggle.”

 

Like a lot of 2016 Trump voters, Amato goes on to say she won't vote for Trump, but she doesn't know if she'll vote for Biden or at all (she would have voted for Mayor Pete "in a heartbeat" though.)  I don't blame her for not wanting to vote for a septuagenarian white dude, but it really is a binary choice right now.

Biden, or not voting for Biden.  That's the choice.

Vote like your country, your state, your county, your city, your home depends on it.

Because it does.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The NY Times frames the Trump campaign's effort to suppress the Black vote as "trying to woo Black men", which tells you both how much the Times depends on Republican framing of political issues and how effective it is, but Biden and the Democrats at least seem to understand that this is all about making sure that Black voters don't show up at all in battleground states, and they are making the effort to counter it. 

Four years after an election that came down to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the campaigns of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and President Trump are waging an intense and surprising battle in those states for votes among a crucial demographic: Black men.

The outreach is vital for Democrats, who lost the three industrial states in 2016 partly because of diminished support from Black voters. They worry that not enough Black men will cast ballots — or that Mr. Trump might make enough marginal gains to help in close races.

The Biden campaign is now heavily focused on getting Black men to turn out to vote: Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama will campaign together for the first time this year on Saturday in Detroit and Flint, Mich. Mr. Biden is also running a series of ads featuring young Black men from Flint, tying local issues to the election. One walks through the history of Black voter suppression; another starts with Mr. Biden saying “Black Lives Matter, period.”

In Philadelphia, where Hillary Clinton had strong but not surging support from Black voters in 2016, the Biden camp also deployed Mr. Obama for a day of campaigning, sent Senator Cory Booker to Sunday round tables in the city’s northern neighborhoods, and relied on leaders like Sharif Street, a state senator and the son of former Mayor John F. Street, to canvass neighborhoods multiple times.

The Trump strategy has aimed to erode Mr. Biden’s support with a negative campaign. One television ad replays Mr. Biden’s controversial “you ain’t Black” comment, in which he questioned how Black Americans could support Mr. Trump, and reprises his role in the 1994 crime bill. A set of 40 digital ads claiming “Joe Biden Insulted Millions of Black Americans” has been running across the country for the past week.

The battle for Black men is one of the more surprising developments in a race that has been defined by the monthslong stable lead of Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump in many polls. Republicans are making a concerted push to cut into the Democrats’ base of Black support in battleground states, as well as drive up their own numbers of Latino voters, and some polling suggests the effort has been moderately successful.

Mr. Biden held a 78-11 percentage point lead among Black men in a recent national poll from The New York Times and Siena College, a comparatively weak number for a Democratic nominee whose ticket includes the first Black woman selected as vice president. (Many undecided Black voters are widely expected to vote Democratic, though a number could well stay home.)

Mr. Trump won roughly 13 percent of Black male voters in 2016, according to exit polls; some Trump advisers are aiming to get closer to 20 percent next week.

Among some Black men, there is a belief that Mr. Biden carries similar baggage to Mrs. Clinton: a policy history that includes helping pass legislation that contributed to large increases in Black prison populations, and a party history in which they feel Democratic candidates are more concerned with winning Black voters than improving the conditions of Black communities.

Demery Charleston, a 42-year-old who lives in a suburb of Detroit called Harper Woods, said he was voting for Republicans because he believed they spoke out more forcefully against violence within Black communities and the incidents of looting that occurred during a summer of protests.

“I’m talking about the real Detroit. I don’t see these protesters marching in these neighborhoods,” Mr. Charleston said. “A 7-year-old girl gets shot in the neighborhood, and there’s nothing. It’s real hypocrisy,” he added, referring to a girl who was shot by someone driving by her Detroit home in May.

Mr. Obama, for one, tried to respond to such criticism of Democrats by delivering a direct message to Black men at a recent event in Philadelphia: Don’t get cynical.

“What I’ve consistently tried to communicate this year, particularly when I’m talking to young brothers, who may be cynical of what can happen, is to acknowledge to them that government and voting alone is not going to change everything,” Mr. Obama said. “But we did make things better.” 

 

I'm extremely glad that the Biden campaign understands what's going on here. Reducing Black voter support by even 10% would lower Biden's vote total in both the battleground states of the Upper Midwest like MI, WI, and PA and in Southern states like NC, GA, and FL by 1-2% overall, enough that Trump could win several of these states, or as he did in 2016, all of them.

 

We're going to need every vote, because the second this election is over, Trump no longer needs any voters, let alone Black ones.

 

 

Last Call For Lowering The Barr, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr says he would of course like to stick around in a Trump second term and finish the transition from representative oligarchical democracy to authoritarian dictatorship over the next four years.

Attorney General William P. Barr — who has recently faced criticism from President Trump for not prosecuting his political rivals — has told friends and advisers in recent weeks that he hopes to stay on for some time in the next term, if Trump wins the election.

The assertion from the president’s top law enforcement official might otherwise be unsurprising, if not for the public pressure Trump has put on Barr in recent months to deliver results from an investigation Barr specially commissioned to review the FBI’s 2016 probe of possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s campaign.

Trump also has openly discussed with advisers firing FBI Director Christopher A. Wray after Election Day, even though Wray is only a little more than three years into what is normally a 10-year appointment. Barr has generally sought to shield Wray from Trump’s wrath, though his friends believe he would not resign in protest were the FBI director ousted, people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically sensitive topic.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

Even amid the president’s attacks, the attorney general has conveyed to friends he would like to stay on the job.

“Barr told me recently he supports the president and would be inclined to stay if the president wanted him to,” said Richard Cullen, a lawyer and longtime friend of Barr who represented Vice President Pence.

It is less clear what Trump wants to do.

In August, Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that Barr “can go down as the greatest attorney general in the history of our country, or he can go down as an average guy,” depending on the results of the investigation, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut, into the FBI’s 2016 probe of Trump’s campaign. Trump has agitated for criminal charges or investigations for those he considers political rivals — including former FBI director James B. Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and even former vice president Joe Biden, his opponent in the 2020 race.

More recently, after news reports that results from Durham’s investigation would not be made public before the election, Trump told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh: “I think it’s a terrible thing. And I’ll say it to [Barr’s] face.”

Trump has called publicly for his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, and declined to say whether he would want Barr around in a second term.

A person familiar with the matter said previously that while Barr understands Trump’s frustration about the Durham probe, his pressure was “not going to change anything.” Barr has said previously that Biden was not under investigation in that case. The person said that Barr wants to stay on to see the end of Durham’s work, though it is unclear how long he envisioned his tenure lasting.

 

If Trump wins, it's going to be because of Barr's work organizing and shepherding the legal arguments that allow SCOTUS  to give the election to Trump. And Barr will point to that and say "Now here's what else we can do with the Supreme Court in our pocket."

It's possible that Barr will even be smart enough to continue to not actually arrest Democrats and make martyrs out of them to rally the resistance around, but instead to use the constant investigations into Trump's political enemies in order to grind the opposition down slowly.

Either way, I expect Barr to definitely stick around in a second Trump term, should that scenario come to pass.

Barr will make himself architect of that win, and he'll get to stay and do far worse to us in the future.

 

And keep in mind, Nate Silver's 10% chance for Trump to win or not, this election will ultimately be decided by how Trump's 6-3 conservative Roberts Court decides to respond (or not to respond) to the election results.

The Kids Are Alright, The Kentucky State Police Are Not

So, hell of a tale to tell here in Kentucky right now, and it comes to us from duPont Manual High School in Louisville, where the students running the local paper, the Manual Redeye, broke a major news story on Friday involving the Kentucky State Police.

A training slideshow used by the Kentucky State Police (KSP) — the second largest police force in the state — urges cadets to be “ruthless killer[s]” and quotes Adolf Hitler advocating violence.

The slideshow was included in KSP documents obtained via an open records request by local attorney David Ward of Adams Landenwich Walton during the discovery phase of a lawsuit. Ward requested KSP materials used to train a detective who shot and killed a man in Harlan County, and Ward shared the presentation with Manual RedEye.

One slide, titled “Violence of Action,” in addition to imploring officers to be “ruthless killer[s],” instructs troopers to have “a mindset void of emotion” and to “meet violence with greater violence.”

A line from Adolf Hitler’s fascist and anti-Semitic manifesto, Mein Kampf, is featured in the slide: “the very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”

The presentation also links to a Hitler page on Goodreads, a database of quotes and books.

Two other slides quoting Hitler bring his total to three, making him the most quoted person in the presentation.

In a statement emailed to RedEye reporters, KSP spokesperson Lieutenant Joshua Lawson wrote, “The quotes are used for their content and relevance to the topic addressed in the presentation. The presentation touches on several aspects of service, selflessness, and moral guidance. All of these topics go to the fundamentals of law enforcement such as treating everyone equally, service to the public, and being guided by the law.”

In a separate email, Lawson also stated that the presentation seems to be seven years old and appears to have been made by an instructor at the academy. It is not clear how long the presentation was used, or if it is still used. (Editor’s note: According to a statement received after publication from Morgan Hall, the Communications Director for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, the presentation was not used after 2013.)

Although the presentation also features quotes from a variety of other sources including Sun Tzu and Albert Einstein, Dr. Jack Glaser —a professor at the University of California Berkeley who studies police practices — found the Hitler quotes inexcusable.

“Hitler is, justifiably, the archetype of a bad person with the worst, inhumane morals. It’s controversial enough to quote him when trying to illustrate a point about genocidal despots. Quoting him in the manner that these trainings do —prescriptively —is unfathomable,” Glaser wrote in an email to RedEye reporters.

The training materials are coming to light during a national discussion about systemic racism and the role of police in communities, a debate centered on Kentucky after Louisville Metro Police Department officers shot Breonna Taylor in March.

Since 2018, KSP troopers have committed at least 16 fatal shootings according to a Washington Post database of police shootings, the most of any police force in the state. Troopers were not wearing body cameras during any of the shootings.

During the same timeframe, the Louisville Metro Police Department, the largest police force in the state, killed 15 people, including Taylor.

 

Both Governor Beshear and Lousiville Congressman John Yarmuth have issues very critical statements vowing to look into the matter, which again, the Kentucky State Police isn't denying.

 

But yeah, as recently as 2013, KY State Police were happily referencing Hitler on training cops how to be "warriors" and how to kill in order to "be the one to survive and walk away" in a conflict with the people they are supposed to be protecting and serving.

And hey, students at Manual High? Excellent job.You made a real difference.

The Country Goes Viral, Con't

As we cross the Rubicon into 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per day while Trump lies to us and says "we're turning the corner" at every rally, a reminder that this Halloween, America is trapped in an absolutely real nightmare.

The outlook for the pandemic continues to worsen, and many areas of the United States are experiencing their worst weeks yet. The country reported a record of more than 500,000 new coronavirus cases in the past week.

It’s not just a few areas driving the surge, as was the case early on. Half of U.S. counties saw new cases peak during the past month. Almost a third saw a record in the past week.

In the Upper Midwest and Mountain West, records are being smashed almost daily, and in some counties as much as 5 percent of the population has tested positive for the virus to date.

Some records come with an asterisk. With less widespread testing capacity in the spring, cases went undercounted then compared with now.

And in some less populous places, a record number is not necessarily a very high one. Orleans County, Vt., for example, saw eight cases in the past week — a record for the rural county of about 27,000 people on the Canadian border, but hardly a severe outbreak.

Taylor County, Fla., a Gulf Coast county of similar size, had 32 cases in the past week, four times as many as Orleans but far fewer than the record 600 new cases it had during the first week of August.

Yet many parts of the Sun Belt that were hot spots over the summer continue to record substantial numbers of new cases each day, even if they are falling short of their summer peaks.

And other critical metrics underscore the severity and acceleration of the current outbreak. Hospitalization data, which the Covid Tracking Project collects at the state level, shows that the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus reached record highs in almost half of states in recent weeks.

The recent surge in cases has not yet brought a similar surge in reported deaths, which can lag cases by up to several weeks. But already deaths are increasing in about half of states.

In the past month, about a third of U.S. counties hit a daily record of more deaths than any other time during the pandemic.

 

We're now at the point where Trump and Republicans refusing to allow lockdowns at the state level will kill a lot of Americans in the weeks and months ahead. I'm hoping that after Election Day, we'll see governors in both parties start restricting travel, restaurants, bars, and theaters, and telling people to stay home.

Because if we don't?

 

Regardless of the election results, Trump will do nothing until January.  There will be no national effort to coordinate states on COVID-19 at all. Everyone is on their own.

 

We're still months away from a working, widely available vaccine. Maybe a year. Maybe more.

The death toll will be into seven figures.

Count on it.

Deportation Nation, Con't

A scary thought this Halloween.

 

Trump regime Minister of Purity Stephen Miller is licking his chops at the prospect of putting the Trump deportation machine into overdrive should Trump win, and by his own words, we learn that there's still a lot of damage these fiends can do to people if given the chance.

Immigration has been overshadowed by surging coronavirus case numbers and an economy shattered by a nearly yearlong pandemic, but it was central to Trump's rise to power in the Republican Party, and Miller has been a driving force for the administration's often controversial policies to crack down on illegal migration and erect hurdles for aspiring legal immigrants.

Miller has spearheaded an immigration policy that critics describe as cruel, racist and antithetical to American values as a nation of immigrants. He scoffs at those claims, insisting that his only priority is to protect the safety and wages of Americans.

And he said he intends to stay on to see the agenda through in a second term if Trump is re-elected.

In the near term, Miller wouldn't commit to lifting the freeze on new green cards and visas that's set to expire at the end of the year, saying it would be "entirely contingent" on governmental analysis that factors in the state of the job market.

Asked whether he would support reinstating the controversial "zero tolerance" policy that led to families' being separated, Miller said the Trump administration is "100 percent committed to a policy of family unity," but he described the policy as one that would keep families together in immigration detention by changing what is known as the Flores settlement agreement.

Over the past year, the administration has sought to amend the Flores agreement, which says children can't be held over 20 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. If it succeeds, immigrant families could be detained indefinitely as they await their day in immigration court.

On Trump's watch, asylum grants have plummeted. Miller wants to keep it that way. He said a second-term Trump administration would seek to expand "burden-sharing" deals with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that cut off pathways to the U.S. for asylum-seekers.

"The president would like to expand that to include the rest of the world," Miller said. "And so if you create safe third partners in other continents and other countries and regions, then you have the ability to share the burden of asylum-seekers on a global basis."

"Another major priority with a big contrast is going to be really cracking down aggressively on sanctuary cities," Miller said.

He noted that the administration has withheld some grants to sanctuary cities. In a second term, he said, it would continue the battle with two new initiatives.

First, Miller said, Trump would push for legislation filed by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., which would punish jurisdictions that refuse to turn over arrested people who are in the U.S. illegally to ICE for deportation. Second, Trump would go a step further with a law to "outlaw the practice," thereby making it mandatory for authorities to turn those migrants over to the feds.

Miller said another priority would be "building on and expanding the framework that we've created with the travel ban, in terms of raising the standard for screening and vetting for admission to the United States."

That includes enhanced screening methods and more information-sharing among agencies to vet applicants seeking admission into the country. The U.S. already looks for ties to terrorism and extremist groups. Miller wants to go further by vetting the "ideological sympathies or leanings" of visa applicants to gauge their potential for recruitment by radicals.

That may include changing the interview process, adding interviews or talking to people close to applicants about their beliefs.

"That's going to be a major priority," he said. "It's going to require a whole government effort. It's going to require building a very elaborate and very complex screening mechanism."

Miller said a second-term Trump administration would finalize efforts to curtail use of guest-worker programs like H-1B visas, including by eliminating the lottery system used in the process when applications exceed the annual quota and by giving priority to those being offered the highest wages.

He said Trump would pursue a "points-based entry system" for American visa grants aimed at admitting only those who "can contribute the most to job creation and economic opportunity" while preventing "displacement of U.S. workers."

  

Miller would effectively end legal immigration, criminalize illegal immigration with massive expansion of armed and violent enforcement, end refugee resettlement in the US, and expel millions, possibly tens of millions, from the country.

But the jackpot for Miller is the new Roberts Court, and with the 6-3 conservative bent he just may get his wish. What he really wants is an end to birthright citizenship.

The architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy, senior adviser Stephen Miller, is said to have a drawer full of executive orders ready to be signed in “shock and awe” style if Trump is re-elected.

The former homeland security department chief of staff Miles Taylor said this wishlist was reserved for the second term because it included policies that were too unpopular for a president seeking re-election.

This comes as no surprise to those who have watched and worried as legal pathways to US immigration shut under Trump, and who wonder not just about four more years of him as president, but also about four more years with Miller at his side.

The 35-year-old has managed to keep his position as a senior adviser to the president after being exposed for having an affinity for white nationalism and becoming synonymous with unpopular Trump administration policies such as family separation – when thousands of children were taken away from their parents at the southern border to deter would-be migrants. Three years later, more than 500 kids are still yet to be reunited with their parents.

Jean Guerrero, the author of the Miller biography Hatemonger, told the Guardian: “There’s a number of things they have been cautious about because of the legal and political risks in the first term and I think that in a second term you would see Stephen Miller get much freer rein when it comes to his wishlist of items.”

Those items are expected to include attempting to eliminate birthright citizenship, making the US citizenship test more difficult to pass, ending the program which protects people from deportation when there is a crisis is their country (Temporary Protected Status) and slashing refugee admissions even further, to zero.

 

As bad as Miller's stated deportation and collective punishment goals are, the unstated goals of pushing America into a fascist, white supremacist ethno-state are much, much worse.