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millerco

Senate Approves Budget Plan That Smooths Path Toward Tax Cut - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...budget-vote-senate.html

Us history senate budget plan republicans democrats politics Trump

shared by millerco on 20 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The Senate took a significant step toward rewriting the tax code on Thursday night with the passage of a budget blueprint that would protect a $1.5 trillion tax cut from a Democratic filibuster.
  • The budget resolution could also pave the way for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration by ensuring that drilling legislation can pass with only Republican votes.
  • Despite having full control of the government, Republicans have so far been unable to produce a marquee legislative achievement in the first year of President Trump’s tenure, putting even more pressure on lawmakers to succeed in passing a tax bill.
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  • The budget’s passage could keep Republicans on track to approve a tax package late this year or early in 2018.
  • As early as next week, the House plans to take up the budget blueprint that the Senate approved on Thursday by a 51 to 49 vote. Doing so would allow for the tax overhaul to move ahead quickly.
  • Speaker Paul D. Ryan will need most House Republicans to back the blueprint without changes; in the Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone Republican to vote against the measure on Thursday, in protest of what he deemed excessive spending.
  • If House Republicans were to insist on negotiating a compromise that melds the Senate and House budget plans, tax legislation could be delayed.
  • “This is the last, best chance we will have to cut taxes,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the Budget Committee, who warned that the consequences would be ruinous if the party failed.
  • “That will be the end of us as a party,” he said, “because if you’re a Republican and you don’t want to simplify the tax code and cut taxes, what good are you to anybody?”
krystalxu

Trump ends DACA but gives Congress window to save it - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics US Crisis Trump Obama

shared by krystalxu on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump blamed former President Barack Obama for creating the program through executive authority and urged Congress to come up with a solution.
  • giving Congress time to act before any currently protected individuals lose their ability to work, study and live without fear in the US.
  • In a statement, House Speaker Paul Ryan reiterated his aspiration that Congress will reach a solution in time.
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  • nearly 300,000 people could begin to lose their status in 2018, and more than 320,000 would lose their status from January to August 2019.
  • "would be like any other person who's in the country illegally,"
  • Obama then extolled the virtues of DACA recipients while implicitly rebutting the administration's arguments for ending the program.
Javier E

Why We're Freaking Out About Substack - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ck-newsletter-competition.html

newsletter media substack publishing

shared by Javier E on 14 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • he new media economy promises both to make some writers rich and to turn others into the content-creation equivalent of Uber drivers, even as journalists turn increasingly to labor unions to level out pay scales.
  • This new direct-to-consumer media also means that battles over the boundaries of acceptable views and the ensuing arguments about “cancel culture” — for instance, in New York Magazine’s firing of Andrew Sullivan — are no longer the kind of devastating career blows they once were.
  • Though Substack paid advances to a few dozen writers, most are simply making money from readers. That includes most of the top figures on the platform, who make seven-figure sums from more than 10,000 paying subscribers — among them Mr. Sullivan, the liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson, and the confrontational libertarian Glenn Greenwald.
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  • This new ability of individuals to make a living directly from their audiences isn’t just transforming journalism. It’s also been the case for adult performers on OnlyFans, musicians on Patreon, B-list celebrities on Cameo. In Hollywood, too, power has migrated toward talent, whether it’s marquee showrunners or actors. This power shift is a major headache for big institutions, from The New York Times to record labels.
  • Substack’s thesis is, in part, that media companies underpay their most prominent writers. So far, that seems to be bearing out.
  • many of the writers who took advances now regret doing so: They would have made more money by simply collecting subscription revenue, and paying Substack 10 percent, than making the more complex deals with money up front.
  • The former Vox writer Matthew Yglesias calculated that taking the advance wound up costing him nearly $400,000 in subscription revenue paid to Substack
  • One of the writers who left Substack over transgender issues, Jude Doyle, argued that its system of advances amounted to a kind of editorial policy. But the analogy to a media company isn’t clear.
  • Grace Lavery said she wanted Substack to be more aggressive about stopping harassment, but said she didn’t think threats to boycott the email service over writers she disagrees with made political sense.
  • “Boycotting Substack because of Jesse Singal would be like boycotting a paper company” over a writer who has books printed on their paper, she said.
  • The real threat is competing platforms with a different model. The most technically powerful of those is probably Ghost, which allows writers to send and charge for newsletters, with monthly fees starting at $9.
  • While Substack is backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Ghost has Wikipedia vibes: It is open-source software developed by a nonprofit.
  • it’s easy to leave. Unlike on Facebook or Twitter, Substack writers can simply take their email lists and direct connections to their readers with them.
  • Ghost represents an even purer departure from legacy media. More than half of the sites on the platform simply run the software off their own servers.
  • Mr. Sullivan, who said he saw Substack as his tech platform, not his publisher, has begun deliberately promoting smaller writers in an “In the Stacks” section and said he was interested in figuring out how to bundle subscriptions.
  • This week, eight writers who cover tech, media and culture — Mr. Warzel, Mr. Newton, Anne Helen Petersen, Nick Quah, Eric Newcomer, Delia Cai, Ryan Broderick and Kim Zetter — are starting a “virtual newsroom” called Sidechannel on Discord, a platform for text and voice conversations
  • “We’re coming out of this era where platforms own people, and moving into this era where people own platforms,” he said. “We have to prove to the writers we’re delivering enough value to them to keep them happy and help them succeed.”
  • my informal survey of Substack writers found that most are fond of the company and plan to stick around for now — but not out of the sense of loyalty, shared mission or deep identification that used to run through media companies.
  • “Taking V.C. money does not create in me a sense of obligation,”
aleija

Opinion | Elise Stefanik and the Young Republicans Who Sold Out Their Generation - The ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tefanik-trump-republicans.html

GOP politics US Trump Culture policy

shared by aleija on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Once upon a time, a shiny new trio of young conservatives — Ryan Costello, Carlos Curbelo and Elise Stefanik — wanted to help build a modern, millennial Republican Party. The 30-somethings, all sworn into Congress in 2015, understood that millennials often agreed on many of the nation’s core problems, and believed it was up to them to offer conservative solutions. They were out to create a new G.O.P. for the 21st century.
  • Of course, the road to political obsolescence is littered with the bones of political analysts like me who predicted that demographics would be destiny. But Mr. Trump didn’t just devastate the G.O.P.’s fledgling class of up-and-coming talent. He also rattled the already precarious loyalty of young Republican voters; from December 2015 to March 2017, nearly half of Republicans under 30 left the party, according to Pew. Many returned, but by 2017, nearly a quarter of young conservatives had defected.
  • Ms. Stefanik is one of the few of this set who survived, but only by transforming into a MAGA warrior. By 2020, she was co-chairing Mr. Trump’s campaign and embracing his conspiracy theories about a stolen election. Her pivot paid off: This month, she was elected to the No. 3 position in the House Republican Party. She is now the highest-ranking woman and most powerful millennial in the House G.O.P.
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  • “The G.O.P. needs to prioritize reaching out to younger voters,” she told me. “Millennials bring a sense of bipartisanship and really rolling up our sleeves and getting things done.” Now she has tied her political career to the man who has perhaps done more than any other Republican to drive young voters away from her party, resulting in surging youth turnout for Democrats in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
  • The G.O.P. has embraced a political form of youth sacrifice, immolating their hopes for young supporters in order to appease an ancient, vengeful power.
  • It was clear, even then, that millennial voters across the political spectrum cared more about issues like racial diversity, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and college affordability than their parents did. Polls showed that young Republicans were more moderate on some issues than older ones, particularly on questions of immigration and climate change.
  • Millennials and Gen Zers were already skeptical of the G.O.P., but Mr. Trump alienated them even further. His campaign of white grievance held little appeal for the two most racially diverse generations in U.S. history. Youth voter turnout was higher in 2020 than it was in 2016, with 60 percent of young voters picking Joe Biden.
  • And anti-Trumpism may now be one of the most durable political values of Americans under 50. By the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency, after the Jan. 6 insurrection, almost three-quarters of Americans under 50 said they strongly disapproved of him. Even young Republicans were cooling off: According to a new CBS poll, Republicans under 30 were more than twice as likely as those older than 44 to believe that Mr. Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election and roughly twice as likely to believe the party shouldn’t follow Mr. Trump’s lead on race issues.
  • “Younger conservatives aren’t focused on the election being stolen or the cultural sound bites,”
  • It’s clear that this version of the Republican Party is firmly the party of old people: Mr. Gaetz and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene kicked off their America First tour with a Trumpian rally at the Villages, Florida’s famous retirement community.
  • Once, the young leaders of the G.O.P. were trying to present next-generation solutions to next-generation problems. Now they’ve traded their claim on the future for an obsession with the past.
carolinehayter

Pentagon watchdog finds National Guard's use of helicopters to fly over DC protestors "... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics trump us

shared by carolinehayter on 28 May 21 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon's watchdog found that the DC National Guard's use of low-flying helicopters in response to protests in DC on June 1, 2020, over the death of George Floyd was "reasonable," but the mission was mired in confusion.
  • The report from the Department of Defense's Inspector General, released Thursday, concluded the deployment of helicopters was justifiable based on the needs of the emergency, as well as the direction from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper to "flood the zone" and "use everything available" to protect "federal property and symbols."
  • A lack of clear guidance on the helicopters' mission compounded the confusion, because Ryan "did not provide clear and consistent direction and mission guidance" and "did not provide his clear and consistent commander's intent to include key tasks and parameters for the operation."Enter your email to sign up for CNN's "What Matters" Newsletter. "close dialog"Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters Newsletter<di
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  • "No specific training, policies, or procedures were in place for using helicopters to support requests for assistance from civilian authorities in civil disturbances," the report's authors wrote. "Prior to the night of June 1st, 2020, the DC [National Guard] did not have a prepared plan to maintain command and control of aviation assets used to support civil disturbances."Read More
  • Well after the curfew, protesters were still out on the streets, and video captured by CNN showed a military helicopter hovering over a group of them, kicking up strong wind and debris with its downwash. The tactic is a show of force and commonly used by the military in overseas combat zones to drive away targets from a specific area.
  • The Defense Department Inspector General largely agreed with an earlier report from an Army investigation that found the use of helicopters was not against federal laws or policies, though there was a "lack of understanding" about their mission.But the new report contradicted the Army investigation's finding that MEDEVAC helicopters were used against regulations and that the helicopters were used without approval from the chain of command.
anonymous

Farmers Are Feeling The Pain As Drought Spreads In The Northwest : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ought-spreads-in-the-northwest

shared by anonymous on 04 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Nicole Berg's stunted wheat field is so short and sparse she doesn't think the combine can even reach the wheat without, as she puts it, eating rocks.
  • Berg is a dryland wheat farmer in the sweeping Horse Heaven Hills of southeastern Washington state. She shows off one head of half-turned golden wheat amid a sea of them. Besides being too short, the plant's kernels didn't fill out properly.
  • "See how the wheat head is curled like that?"
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  • "And then you break into it, you might have some berries down here, but this will be empty. There is no wheat inside the wheat head."
  • Northwest farmers like Berg, and ranchers who depend on rain, are expecting what one farmer called a "somber harvest" this year.
  • On her ranch, Berg says she's also worried about 1,000 acres of native grass seeds she has to plant this year into dry soil for a government conservation program. She says with all the Western wildfires in recent years, the wild grass and forage seeds have become expensive. She hates to plant them in shallow, bone-dry soil only to lose the crop if there's not sufficient rain.
  • The Berg's aren't the only ones suffering. The region is parched from near the Canadian border clear to the edge of Nevada, with triple digit temps on the way making it worse.
  • Earlier this year, Oregon declared drought zones for eight counties, and six more have requested it since. Now the drought is rapidly expanding into usually cooler and wetter western Oregon, according to Ryan Andrews, a hydrologist for the state's Water Resources Department. He says the thirsty ground will absorb whatever rain comes, meaning streams and rivers will get little water.
  • Jeff Marti, a drought expert for Washington's Department of Ecology, says it hasn't been this dry since the 1920s.
  • "It's the story of the irrigation haves and the have nots," he says. "Meaning those folks who get their water from rivers or storage, are probably going to be fine for their irrigation needs. But the dryland users and the folks that have cattle that depend on forage on the rangelands may be more challenged."
  • Looking ahead, Marti says the warming climate may mean more rain for the Northwest, but also much less snowpack that melts sooner. That could stress water supplies even more.
  • A bit west of Alderdale, Washington, cattle rancher Gary Hess is also having a hard time with the drought. His grass-fattened mother cows bawl at their calves, wanting them to stay close and away from the cattle dog. But he only has enough irrigated pasture for a small part of his herd, the rest are on dryland range. So Hess recently sold 70 mother cows with calves at their sides to another operator in Wyoming. They had many more good calves in them, and he hated to see them go. But he has no dryland grass to keep them.
  • "When you have to sell younger cows, that's a disappointment," Hess says as he tears up a bit. "With the kind of weather we've had the last couple of years, and the drought and the lack of feed and lack of water, we just finally had to cut back."
  • This spring it's also been windy here, further drying out the landscape like a blow dryer. Hess is thinking he'll have to sell more cows soon just to survive. He says it's hard to lose animals and bloodlines that he's worked so hard to build up. He figures it could take him up to a decade to build his herd back up without going into debt.
  • Most ranchers say they don't have time to dwell on the trucked-off cattle or lost crops. They're busy applying for federal disaster aid. And they're also keeping an eye out for wildfires that are always top-of-mind in the dry, hot summer, but expected to be worse because of this year's terrible drought.
aleija

Opinion | Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...israel-gaza-conflict.html

Culture Economics opinion global

shared by aleija on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • When I wrote a couple of columns criticizing Israel as well as Hamas over the recent Gaza war, I had pushback from readers who asked: So what would you have Israel do?
  • “How should, in fact, Israel respond when Hamas launches thousands of rockets?” Ryan asked. On my Facebook page, Joel put it this way: “Mr. Kristof, what do you recommend that Israel do in response to rocket attacks? What would the American response be to repeated rocket attacks from Mexico or Canada on American cities?”
  • We probably would not turn the other cheek: When the Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa attacked a New Mexico town in 1916, the United States sent 6,000 troops into Mexico (albeit after getting Mexico’s permission). And in response to the 9/11 attacks, America invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq.
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  • More to the point, though, the question of how the U.S. would respond reflects a myopia about the origins of Hamas shelling.
  • Israeli officials did not wake up one bright morning to find thousands of rockets raining down,” notes Sari Bashi, an Israeli human rights lawyer. “Israeli security forces, led by a prime minister desperate to stay in power to avoid jail on corruption charges, created a provocation by using violence and the threat of violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem. They stormed a sensitive religious site, used excessive force against demonstrators and threatened to forcibly transfer Palestinian families from their homes as part of an official policy to ‘Judaize’ occupied East Jerusalem, which is a war crime.”
  • So the question of how the United States would respond if Canada started shelling Seattle seems misplaced. After all, Israel deliberately nurtured Hamas in the first place (to create a rival to existing Palestinian groups), and the United Nations and most experts consider Israel to be occupying Gaza (because Israel controls it, even though it withdrew in 2005).
  • Similarly, the Irish Republican Army, with support from some in Ireland and the United States, bombed Britain’s Parliament, Harrods department store and the Conservative Party Conference, along with innumerable other targets. Yet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not bomb Dublin or Boston, nor did she bulldoze the offices of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.’s political wing.
  • In 2018, ETA announced it was disbanding, adding “we are truly sorry” for violence that claimed 800 lives. In Northern Ireland, where the conflict initially seemed even more intractable than the disputes in the Middle East do today, a negotiated peace was reached with the Good Friday accords of 1998.
anonymous

About 20,000 National Guard Members To Deploy For Inauguration, Officials Say : Insurre... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...inauguration-d-c-official-says

shared by anonymous on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Local and federal security officials expect about 20,000 National Guard members to be involved in securing Washington, D.C., for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next week.
  • "I think you can expect to see somewhere upwards of beyond 20,000 members of the National Guard that will be here in the footprint of the District of Columbia,"
  • It represents an uptick in National Guard troops that will be deployed to the area. Army Times reported earlier this week that the Pentagon had authorized 15,000 National Guard members to be sent to the District for the inauguration.
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  • The troops will be coming from nearly all states, Bowman reported, adding that only those who are either military police or have law enforcement experience will be armed.
  • The exact number to be deployed is still being worked out by the Secret Service, the lead agency on inauguration security, and others,
  • Contee said the inauguration has been designated as a "national special security event," adding the final numbers of troops would come from the Secret Service and leaving open the possibility the numbers could fluctuate.
  • Others will have access to their weapons but not carry them, and it remains unclear where the troops will deploy at the U.S. Capitol, according to the U.S. official.
  • President Trump issued a statement Wednesday urging supporters to commit "NO violence," citing unspecified reports on future demonstrations.
  • Presidential inaugurations are always massive security operations, but Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20 is facing heightened security concerns following last week's breach of the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer.
  • These security moves come as the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to impeach President Trump a second time.
  • It was a startling reminder that just a week ago rioters attacked the building, overrunning Capitol Police in an attempt to block lawmakers from confirming Biden's Electoral College victory.
  • Since the siege, some members of Congress, including Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, have requested that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy review backgrounds of any National Guard troops involved in inaugural security.
xaviermcelderry

The Capitol Police Had One Mission. Now the Force Is in Crisis. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...capitol-police-washington.html

Capitalpolice

shared by xaviermcelderry on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • As old as the Capitol itself, the Capitol Police began in 1801 with the appointment of a single guard to oversee the move of Congress from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. His task, according to a court filing, was to “take as much care as possible with the property of the United States.”
  • “We’re having a hell of a time getting information from Capitol Police leadership,” said Mr. Ryan, who chairs the House committee that oversees the department’s budget. “We fund the Capitol Police. Congress funds the Capitol Police through the Appropriations Committee. We deserve to know and understand what the hell is going on.”
  • A handful of high-profile incidents in recent years — locking down the Capitol but failing to inform Congress; ordering a nearby tactical team not to respond when a gunman opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard; the fatal shooting of a Black woman who made a U-turn at a checkpoint — have raised questions about the department’s procedures and operational paralysis.
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  • In another, an officer assigned to protect high-ranking lawmakers racked up two charges of drunken driving, including one case in which his car struck a Maryland State Police trooper’s unmarked cruiser. The officer continued to climb the ranks, despite an internal investigation for overtime fraud.
  • The responsibilities of the Capitol Police are vastly different from those of ordinary police departments. The force protects the Capitol grounds, members of Congress and staff, and it screens millions of visitors a year. Officers are expected to recognize the 535 lawmakers and to avoid offending them.
  • The delicacy of that task was on full display in 1983, when a House inquiry found that the Capitol Police had botched a drug investigation by creating “the impression that the investigation may have been terminated to protect members” — while noting that, to be sure, no members had been implicated.
  • Allegations of gender discrimination have dogged the department for years. In lawsuits, female officers have described a culture of sexual harassment, with commanders rarely punished for lewd remarks or for sleeping with subordinates
xaviermcelderry

Opinion | Has Trump's Reckoning Come Too Late? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-second-impeachment.html

Trump

shared by xaviermcelderry on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said in a statement, adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
  • Trump now becomes the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Half of all presidential impeachments since the Republic began have been impeachments of Trump. This latest impeachment is different than the first, and not just because it was bipartisan. It culminates a week in which Trump has finally faced the broad social pariahdom he’s always deserved.
  • hen a mob incited by the president ransacked the Capitol, killing one policeman and pummeling others, it also tore down a veil. Suddenly, all but the most fanatical partisans admitted that Trump was exactly who his fiercest critics have always said he was.
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  • The siege of the Capitol wasn’t a departure for Trump, it was an apotheosis. For years, he’s been telling us he wouldn’t accept an election loss. For years, he’s been urging his followers to violence, refusing to condemn their violence, and insinuating that even greater violence was on the way. As he told Breitbart in 2019, in one of his characteristic threats, “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
  • Under Trump, political pressure on federal law enforcement to ignore the far right would only grow. After a white supremacist killed 23 people in a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, Dave Gomez, a former F.B.I. supervisor overseeing terrorism cases, told The Washington Post that the agency was “hamstrung” in trying to investigate white nationalists. “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base,” said Gomez.
  • “We’ve got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them,” said President Trump. He urged his minions to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the place where Congress was meeting to certify the election he lost: “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”
  • Trump now becomes the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Half of all presidential impeachments since the Republic began have been impeachments of Trump. This latest impeachment is different than the first, and not just because it was bipartisan. It culminates a week in which Trump has finally faced the broad social pariahdom he’s always deserved.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 17 Jan 21
       
      he made history
  • It is not yet clear who Raskin will be up against. Prominent law firms have refused to represent Trump in his postelection legal fights, and Bloomberg News reports that lawyers who have defended the president in the past don’t want to do so anymore. For four years, as Trump has brought ever more havoc and hatred to this country, many have wondered what it would take to dent his impunity. The answer appears to be twofold: Committing sedition, and losing power.
  • The House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment report quotes, at length, the speech that Donald Trump gave to his devotees on Jan. 6 before many of them stormed the Capitol, baying for execution.
  • Banks promised to stop lending to him. Major social media companies banned him. One of the Trump Organization’s law firms dropped it as a client. The coach of the New England Patriots rejected the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the P.G.A. pulled its namesake tournament from a Trump golf course. Universities revoked honorary degrees. Some of the country’s biggest corporations, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pledged to withhold donations from congressional enablers of his voter fraud fantasy. Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would end contracts with the Trump Organization to run two ice rinks and other concessions worth millions annually.
  • Throughout his presidency, Republicans pretended not to hear what the president was saying. For the last few months, Republican election officials in Georgia have spoken with mounting desperation of being barraged with death threats as a result of Trump’s ceaseless lies about the election, but national Republicans did little to restrain him. There was no exodus away from the president and his brand when, during the debates, he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
  • That is part of the work of the second impeachment. This impeachment may be as much a burden for Democrats as for Republicans; a Senate trial would surely postpone some of the urgent business of the Biden administration. It has gone forward because Democrats had no choice if they wanted to defend our increasingly fragile system of government.
leilamulveny

Far-right activist is among the latest Capitol rioters to be arrested. - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...arrests-capitol-riot.html

activist arrested new york times trump crisis Politics

shared by leilamulveny on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Anthime Joseph Gionet, a far-right media personality nicknamed “Baked Alaska” who is known for livestreaming himself participating in illegal activity, was arrested by the F.B.I. on Friday and accused of illegally storming the Capitol during the attack on the building by President Trump’s supporters last week.
  • He posted a video that showed supporters of Mr. Trump taking selfies with officers in the Capitol who calmly asked them to leave the premises. The video showed the Trump supporters talking among themselves, laughing, and telling the officers and each other: “This is only the beginning.”
  • charged with two federal crimes
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  • “Patriots are in control,” and said, “We are in the Capitol building, 1776 will commence again.”
  • Over 70 arrests have been made in relation to the riots, and at least 170 cases have been opened. Many of the mob participants have been easily identified through their social media posts.
  • Ms. Hernandez was seen in numerous videos and photographs holding Ms. Pelosi’s splintered nameplate like a prized keepsake. According to documents from the F.B.I., the agency received tips about Ms. Hernandez from her friends and acquaintances after she posted pictures and videos of herself parading around with the nameplate on Facebook and Snapchat. One tipster recognized her from a widely circulated video by ITV News, which is based in Britain.
  • Jenna Ryan, a real estate broker from Frisco, Texas, who took a private plane to Washington to participate in the mob, was also charged on Friday
Javier E

TikTok's owner is helping China's campaign of repression in Xinjiang, report finds - Th... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-bf62-eadd5d11f559_story.html

tech campaign repression china corporations Policy ethnic

shared by Javier E on 28 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • In a detailed new report, experts at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's International Cyber Policy Centre concluded that many Chinese tech companies “are engaged in deeply unethical behavior in Xinjiang, where their work directly supports and enables mass human rights abuses.”
  • “Some of these companies lead the world in cutting-edge technology development, particularly in the AI and surveillance sectors,” Fergus Ryan, Danielle Cave and Vicky Xiuzhong Xu write in the report. “But this technology development is focused on servicing authoritarian needs, and as these companies go global (an expansion often funded by [Chinese] loans and aid) this technology is going global as well.”
  • Xinjiang Internet Police began working with Douyin, the local version of TikTok, last year and built a “new public security and Internet social governance model” in 2018. Then in April, the Ministry of Public Security’s Press and Publicity Bureau signed a strategic cooperation agreement with ByteDance to promote the “influence and credibility” of police departments nationwide, the ASPI experts said.
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  • Over the same period, ByteDance has flourished. Its TikTok app has been downloaded a billion times, of which nearly 100 million came from the United States, and it has a jaw-dropping valuation of $75 billion.
  • ByteDance has also been working with Xinjiang authorities under a program called “Xinjiang Aid,” whereby Chinese companies open subsidiaries or factories in Xinjiang and employ locals who have been detained in the camps. Its operations are centered on Hotan, an area of Xinjiang considered backward by the Communist Party and where the repression has been among the most severe.
  • ByteDance has been guiding and helping Xinjiang authorities and media outlets to use its news aggregation app and Douyin to “propagate and showcase Hotan’s new image,” according to the ASPI report.
  • Leaked documents have previously shown how ByteDance censors content that the Chinese government disapproves of, including Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong.
  • In the case of Huawei, which is locked in an existential battle with the Trump administration, there is evidence of extensive and direct work with Chinese security organs in Xinjiang, including helping authorities there with the “digitization requirements” of public security projects.
  • “Together with the Public Security Bureau, Huawei will unlock a new era of smart policing and help build a safer, smarter society,” a Xinjiang government website quoted one Huawei director as saying last year.
  • When the Xinjiang Public Security Department and Huawei signed the agreement to establish an “intelligent security industry” innovation lab in the regional capital of Urumqi last year, a local official said Huawei had been supplying “reliable technical support” for the department, according to the report
  • Huawei has also participated in a program called “Safe Xinjiang,” which the ASPI experts said was “code for a police surveillance system.”
  • “The Chinese tech companies in this report enjoy a highly favorable regulatory environment and are unencumbered by privacy and human rights concerns,” it concludes. Many are engaged in deeply unethical behavior in Xinjiang, where their work directly supports and enables mass human rights abuses.”
yehbru

Opinion: How to distribute Covid-19 vaccines fairly around the world - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Covid politics vaccine distribution equality

shared by yehbru on 02 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • According to Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, one in ten people around the world may have been infected with the novel coronavirus.
  • A Gates Foundation report reveals this deadly disease to have devastated the global economy and set back the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals by an estimated 20 years.
  • Without collaboration, the rollout of vaccines will be uneven and risks exacerbating inequalities and global tensions
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • the World Health Organization and international health partners have created the "Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator" (ACT-Accelerator) to distribute 2 billion doses of a vaccine, as well as 245 million treatments and 500 million tests by the end of 2021.
  • We need to share our funds, resources and expertise to increase production of lifesaving vaccines and train healthcare workers, while bringing costs down in a way that ensures no country is left behind.
  • It has so far pledged over half a billion dollars to the initiative, with the bulk of this going to COVAX's Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) to help developing countries access approved vaccines.
  • the UK has led a match-funding initiative to the COVAX AMC --pledging £1 for every $4 invested up to £250 million -- that successfully incentivized other countries to join in this global effort.
  • We also know that of the roughly 200 candidate vaccines in development, the vast majority could fail, based on what has been learned from previous vaccine clinical trials
  • We know from previous efforts that distributing lifesaving treatments can highlight inequality built into the international system -- just recall the experience of antiretroviral therapies for HIV/AIDS in the 1990s. After some wealthier countries did not take the threat seriously enough or make equitable access a priority, an epidemic surged across sub-Saharan Africa, which killed over 2 million adults and children in a single year at its peak.
katherineharron

Trump's push to overturn election result tears through GOP - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

election

shared by katherineharron on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump is tearing the Republican Party apart on his way out the door, forcing Republicans to choose sides as they wrestle with the future of the party in the wake of Trump's overt attempts to subvert the results of the election.
  • The President's fixation with overturning the results of a fair and free election is the latest crusade throwing the GOP into a full-blown crisis mode as members attack one another's motives
  • There's no evidence of widespread election fraud
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • But that hasn't stopped a dozen Republican senators -- including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri -- and more than 100 House Republicans from planning to join with Trump to reject the Electoral College votes in states that Biden won when Congress convenes a joint session on Wednesday.
  • The effort will only delay the inevitable, as the objections are sure to fail in both the House and the Senate,
  • For weeks, McConnell privately warned his party against making an unforced error by forcing votes on the Electoral College objections, fully aware that questioning the results of the election when Congress meets Wednesday would expose rifts in his ranks and force members up for reelection in 2022 into an unenviable political position.
  • "I'm concerned about the division in America, that's the biggest issue, but obviously this is not healthy for the Republican Party either," said Sasse
  • A group of nearly a dozen Republican senators announced Saturday that they would vote for Hawley's objection when it was brought forward, unless a commission was created to study voter fraud, something that is unlikely.
  • Trump's close ally, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, tweeted on Sunday that proposing an election commission was "not effectively fighting for President Trump" and added "It appears to be more of a political dodge than an effective remedy."
  • But the long-term effects could stretch for years -- and into the 2022 Senate races, with Trump and his allies threatening primary challenges to those Republicans who cross him and vote against the objections. Aides to GOP members still trying to decide what to do next describe an anxious time for the party as members grapple with what choice to make.
  • Throughout Trump's four years in office, Republicans have often expressed frustration or looked the other way at some of Trump's efforts and rhetoric, though they rarely crossed him. But in the past month, many Republicans voted to override Trump's veto of a popular defense policy bill, the first override of Trump's presidency, and McConnell blocked his attempts to give people $2,000 stimulus checks instead of the $600 in the spending and Covid-19 bill that Trump reluctantly signed.
  • "There is substantial reason for concern about the precedent Congressional objections will set here. By objecting to electoral slates, members are unavoidably asserting that Congress has the authority to overturn elections and overrule state and federal courts," Cheney wrote. "Such objections set an exceptionally dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states' explicit constitutional responsibility for choosing the President and bestowing it instead on Congress. This is directly at odds with the Constitution's clear text and our core beliefs as Republicans," she added.
  • Former House Speaker Paul Ryan discouraged his former colleagues from objecting to the election results in a statement Sunday, saying it was "difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans."
  • "I think that if you have a plan, it should [be] a plan that has some chance of working. And neither of the two proposals that have been advanced will produce a result," said Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, who added: "I don't believe it has much long-term impact on our conference."
  • On Thursday morning, McConnell repeatedly called on Hawley to make his case to members on why he was objecting to the results from at least one state. Hawley wasn't on the call, however, and later responded by email to the conference on his rationale. Then over the weekend, multiple senators including Romney, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania skewered any questions that the election had been compromised.
  • Romney specifically said the effort to overturn the election was an "egregious ploy" that "may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic."
  • "I read Sen. Toomey's statement," Hawley said. "I recognize that our caucus will have varied opinions about this subject. That's not surprising. But I also believe we should avoid putting words into each other's mouths," Hawley wrote.
  • "The 2020 election is over. All challenges through recounts and appeals have been exhausted. At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans' confidence in the already determined election results," the senators said.
anonymous

Ex-Capitol Police Chief Says Requests For National Guard Denied 6 Times In Riots : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ard-was-never-called-during-ri

shared by anonymous on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The former chief of U.S. Capitol Police says security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early requests to call in the National Guard ahead of a demonstration in support of President Trump that turned into a deadly attack on Congress.
  • Former chief Steven Sund -- who resigned his post last week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for him to step down
  • Sund's superiors said previously that the National Guard and other additional security support could have been provided, but no one at the Capitol requested it.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Sund told the Post that House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving was concerned with the "optics" of declaring an emergency ahead of the protests and rejected a National Guard presence.
  • Sund says he requested assistance six times ahead of and during the attack on the Capitol. Each of those requests was denied or delayed, he says.
  • Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser also wanted a light police presence at the Capitol.
  • During Wednesday's violence, Bowser requested, and received, a limited force of 340 from the D.C. National Guard. Those troops were unarmed and their job was to help with traffic flow — not law enforcement, which was meant to be handled by D.C. police.
  • When the mob reached the Capitol complex at about 12:40 p.m. ET on Wednesday, it took about 15 minutes for the west side perimeter of the building to be breached, he says. The Capitol Police contingent, which numbered around 1,400 that day, was quickly overrun by the estimated 8,000 rioters.
  • Sund says during a conference call with several law enforcement officials at about 2:26 p.m., he asked the Pentagon to provide backup.
  • Senior Army official Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, director of the Army Staff, said on the call he couldn't recommend that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy authorize deployment,
  • "I don't like the visual of the National Guard standing a police line with the Capitol in the background,
yehbru

Trump Pressured Georgia Official to 'Find' Enough Votes to Overturn Election - The New ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...affensperger-call-georgia.html

US Politics Trump Biden Election Voting Democrats Republicans Georgia

shared by yehbru on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • President Trump demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election, and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense,
  • “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr. Trump said on the call, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post, which published excerpts from the audio on its website Sunday. “Because we won the state.”
  • Mr. Raffensperger rejected the president’s efforts to get him to reverse the election results, which are set to be certified by Congress during a session on Wednesday.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong,” he said
  • During the call, the president offered several false conspiracy theories, including debunked charges that ballots in Fulton County were shredded and that voting machines operated by Dominion Voting Systems were tampered with and replaced.
  • Then the president suggested that Mr. Raffensperger could be prosecuted criminally.
  • “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
  • Mr. Raffensperger wrote: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.”
leilamulveny

Former defense secretaries warn: Using the military to settle the election would be 'un... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-unlawful-and-unconstitutional

transition biden new york times US

shared by leilamulveny on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Former House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Sunday issued a rare statement condemning members of his own party for attempting to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the November election.
  • a dozen senators and more than 100 Republicans in the House have announced their intention to vote on Wednesday to reject electors chosen by the citizens.
  • “It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans. The fact that this effort will fail does not mean it will not do significant damage to American democracy.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “The legal process was exhausted, and the results were decisively confirmed. The Department of Justice, too, found no basis for overturning the result. If states wish to reform their processes for future elections, that is their prerogative. But Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate.”
  • At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans’ confidence in the already determined election results.”
carolinehayter

Google Lawsuit Marks End Of Washington's Love Affair With Big Tech : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...tons-love-affair-with-big-tech

politics US trump policy economics

shared by carolinehayter on 22 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • The U.S. Justice Department and 11 state attorneys general have filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Google, accusing it of being an illegal monopoly because of its stranglehold on Internet search.
  • The government alleged Google has come by its wild success — 80% market share in U.S. search, a valuation eclipsing $1 trillion — unfairly. It said multibillion-dollar deals Google has struck to be the default search engine in many of the world's Web browsers and smartphones have boxed out its rivals.
  • Google's head of global affairs, Kent Walker, said the government's case is "deeply flawed." The company warned that if the Justice Department prevails, people would pay more for their phones and have worse options for searching the Internet.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • Just look at the word "Google," the lawsuit said — it's become "a verb that means to search the internet." What company can compete with that?
  • "It's been a relationship of extremes,"
  • a tectonic shift is happening right now: USA v. Google is the biggest manifestation of what has become known as the "Techlash" — a newfound skepticism of Silicon Valley's giants and growing appetite to rein them in through regulation.
  • "It's the end of hands-off of the tech sector," said Gene Kimmelman, a former senior antitrust official at the Justice Department. "It's probably the beginning of a decade of a series of lawsuits against companies like Google who dominate in the digital marketplace."
  • For years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, Silicon Valley's tech stars have thrived with little regulatory scrutin
  • There is similar skepticism in Washington of Facebook, Amazon and Apple — the companies that, with Google, have become known as Big Tech, an echo of the corporate villains of earlier eras such as Big Oil and Big Tobacco.
  • All four tech giants have been under investigation by regulators, state attorneys general and Congress — a sharp shift from just a few years ago when many politicians cozied up to the cool kids of Silicon Valley.
  • Tech companies spend millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers, and many high-level government officials have left politics to work in tech,
  • It will likely be years before this fight is resolved.
  • She said Washington's laissez-faire attitude toward tech is at least partly responsible for the sector's expansion into nearly every aspect of our lives.
  • "These companies were allowed to grow large, in part because they had political champions on both sides of the aisle that really supported what they were doing and viewed a lot of what they were doing uncritically. And then ... these companies became so big and so powerful and so good at what they set out to do, it became something of a runaway train," she said.
  • The Google lawsuit is the most concrete action in the U.S. to date challenging the power of Big Tech. While the government stopped short of explicitly calling for a breakup, U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General Ryan Shores said that "nothing's off the table."
  • "This case signals that the antitrust winter is over,"
  • other branches of government are also considering ways to bring these companies to heel. House Democrats released a sweeping report this month calling for new rules to strip Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google of the power that has made each of them dominant in their fields. Their recommendations ranged from forced "structural separations" to reforming American antitrust law. Republicans, meanwhile, have channeled much of their ire into allegations that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are biased against conservatives — a claim for which there is no conclusive evidence.
  • Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration are using those bias claims to push for an overhaul of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, a longstanding legal shield that protects online platforms from being sued over what people post on them and says they can't be punished for reasonable moderation of those posts.
  • The CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter are set to appear next week before the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing about Section 230.
  • On the same day the Justice Department sued Google, two House Democrats, Anna Eshoo, whose California district includes large parts of Silicon Valley, and Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, introduced their own bill taking aim at Section 230. It would hold tech companies liable if their algorithms amplify or recommend "harmful, radicalizing content that leads to offline violence."
  • That means whichever party wins control of the White House and Congress in November, Big Tech should not expect the temperature in Washington to warm up.
  • Editor's note: Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon are among NPR's financial supporters.
Javier E

'Its Own Domestic Army': How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tias-republicans-michigan.html

michigan militia extremist gop politics trump history

shared by Javier E on 09 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.
  • “We knew there would be violence,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, about the Jan. 6 assault. Endorsing tactics like militiamen with assault rifles frightening state lawmakers “normalizes violence,” she told journalists last week, “and Michigan, unfortunately, has seen quite a bit of that.”
  • The chief organizer of that protest, Meshawn Maddock, on Saturday was elected co-chair of the state Republican Party — one of four die-hard Trump loyalists who won top posts.
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • Ms. Maddock helped fill 19 buses to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally and defended the April armed intrusion into the Michigan Capitol. When Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, suggested at the time that Black demonstrators would never be allowed to threaten legislators like that, Ms. Maddock wrote on Twitter, “Please show us the ‘threat’?”“Oh that’s right you think anyone armed is threatening,” she continued. “It’s a right for a reason and the reason is YOU.”
  • The lead organizer of the April 30 armed protest, Ryan Kelley, a local Republican official, last week announced a bid for governor. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias — is that a bad thing?” he said in an interview.
  • In the first major protest in the country against stay-at-home orders, thousands of cars, trucks and even a few cement mixers jammed the streets around the Statehouse in Lansing, in what Ms. Maddock called Operation Gridlock. About 150 demonstrators left their vehicles to chant “lock her up” from the Capitol lawn — redirecting the 2016 battle cry about Hillary Clinton against Ms. Whitmer. A few waved Confederate flags. About a dozen heavily armed members of the Michigan Liberty Militia turned up as well
  • woven through Michigan’s militia timeline is a persistent strand of menace. In the early 20th century, the Black Legion, a paramilitary group that included public officials in Detroit and elsewhere, began as an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan and was linked to numerous acts of murder and terrorism.
  • Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, were reported to have associated with militia members in Michigan, though Mr. Olson said they had been turned away because of their violent rhetoric. In the aftermath, militias were largely exiled to the fringes of conspiracy politics, preparing for imagined threats from the New World Order.
  • in recent years, as the Republican Party has drifted further to the right, these groups have gradually found a home there, said JoEllen Vinyard, an emeritus professor of history at Eastern Michigan University who has studied political extremism. Much of their cooperation is centered on defending gun ownership, she said
  • epublicans have controlled both houses of the Michigan Legislature for a decade and held the governor’s mansion for the eight years before Ms. Whitmer took office in 2019. Mr. Trump’s brash nationalism had alienated moderate Republicans and independents while pushing the party to the right.
  • Surrounded by militiamen about two weeks later in Grand Rapids, at an event also organized by Mr. Howland and Mr. Kelley, the senator said in a speech that they had taken him to task for his “jackasses” comment and he effectively retracted it.
  • Ms. Maddock declared Michigan a “tyranny” that night on the Fox News Channel, though she later distanced herself from the armed men. “Of course the militia is disappointing to me, the Confederate flag — look, they’re just idiots,
  • When local armed groups in Michigan began discussing more demonstrations, most Republicans shunned them at first. “They were scared of the word ‘militia,’” recalled Phil Robinson, a member of the Liberty Militia.
  • As the Legislature met on April 30 to vote on extending the governor’s restrictions, Mr. Kelley and his militia allies convened hundreds of protesters, including scores of armed men, some with assault weapons. One demonstrator hung a noose from the back of his pickup. Another held a sign warning that “tyrants get the rope.” Dozens entered the Capitol, some angrily demanding entrance to the lower chamber.
  • “We were harassed and intimidated so that we would not do our jobs,” said Representative Donna Lasinski, leader of the Democratic minority. Lawmakers were terrified, she added.
  • Mr. Maddock, the Republican legislator and Ms. Maddock’s husband, recognized some of the intruders and left the House floor to confer with them. “I like being around people with guns,” he later told The Detroit News.
  • Mr. Trump sided with them, too. “The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people.”
  • Roughly a dozen to 18 armed groups are scattered across Michigan in mostly rural counties, their membership fluctuating with political and economic currents. Estimates of active members statewide are generally in the hundreds.
  • “I was able to see that they are patriots that love their country like the rest of us,” she said, adding that they are “all Republicans.”
  • Other Republicans also came to accept the presence of armed activists. Ms. Gatt, who took part in protests organized by Mr. Kelley and Ms. Maddock, said she felt “intimidated by the militia when I first started getting involved,” but soon changed her mind.
  • The state G.O.P. quickly jumped into the fight. In June, a nonprofit group linked to the Republican Party began providing more than $600,000 to a new advocacy group run in part by Ms. Maddock that was dedicated to fighting coronavirus restrictions. A charity tied to Mr. Shirkey kicked in $500,000.
  • Critics argued that race was an unstated factor in the battle over the stay-at-home order. The Republicans who rallied against the rules were mostly white residents of rural areas and outer suburbs. But more than 40 percent of the deaths in Michigan early on were among African-Americans, concentrated in Detroit, who made up less than 15 percent of the state’s population
  • The Black Lives Matter protests in Michigan were rarely violent or destructive, and the largest took place in Detroit. But Republicans in the rest of the state reacted with alarm to the flashes of violence elsewhere around the country, and President Trump reinforced their fears with his warnings about “antifa.”
  • “Liberals look for trouble and civil unrest and conservatives PREPARE for it,” Gary Eisen, a Republican state legislator and owner of a concealed-weapon training business, wrote on his Facebook page. “I thought maybe I would load up a few more mags,” he added, later saying he had been joking
  • He accused Democrats of encouraging violence. “The Democrats have got antifa; they have got BLM,” he said. “The Democrats championed all of this stuff from a leadership level.”
  • More prominent Michigan Republicans portrayed the Black Lives Matter movement as a looming threat, too. Ms. Maddock told the news site MLive.com that the “destruction” caused by the protests was “absolutely devastating” and “inexcusable.”
  • At the peak of the protests against police violence, though, Mr. Kelley’s American Patriot Council still aimed its sharpest attacks at Governor Whitmer and her stay-at-home order. It released public letters urging the federal authorities to arrest her for violating the Constitution by issuing a stay-at-home order. “Whitmer needs to go to prison,” Mr. Kelley declared in a video he posted on Facebook in early October that was later taken down. “She is a threat to our Republic.”
  • A few days later, federal agents arrested more than a dozen Michigan militiamen, charging them in a plot to kidnap the governor, put her on trial and possibly execute her.
  • It was the culmination of months of mobilization by armed groups, accompanied by increasingly threatening language, and Mr. Trump declined to condemn the plotters. “People are entitled to say, ‘Maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t,’” he declared at a rally in Michigan.
  • Hours after the Nov. 3 election, Ms. Maddock wrote on Facebook: “35k ballots showed up out of nowhere at 3 AM. Need help.” She urged Trump supporters to rush to “monitor the vote” at a ballot-counting center in Detroit. “Report to room 260 STAT.”
  • Mr. Kelley, with Mr. Howland and their armed militia allies, showed up for a rowdy protest outside the ballot counting. Later that month Mr. Kelley told a rally outside the Statehouse that the coronavirus was a ruse to persuade the public to “believe Joe Biden won the election,” The Lansing State Journal reported. One woman held a sign saying “ARREST THE VOTE COUNTERS.”
  • When attempts to stop the counting failed, Ms. Maddock in December led 16 Republican electors trying to push into the Michigan Capitol to disrupt the casting of Democratic votes in the Electoral College. During a “Stop the Steal” news conference in Washington the next day, she vowed to “keep fighting.”
  • Mr. Kelley and Mr. Howland were filmed outside the U.S. Capitol during the riot. Both men said they did not break any laws, and argued that the event was not “an insurrection” because the participants were patriots. “I was there to support the sitting president,” Mr. Kelley said.
  • Mr. Shirkey, the Michigan Senate leader who came around to work with the militias, declined to follow the movement behind Mr. Trump all the way to the end. Summoned to the White House in November, Mr. Shirkey refused the president’s entreaties to try to annul his Michigan defeat.
  • But in an interview last week, the lawmaker said he nonetheless empathized with the mob that attacked Congress.“It was people feeling oppressed, and depressed, responding to what they thought was government just stealing their lives from them,” he said. “And I’m not endorsing and supporting their actions, but I understand where they come from.”
Javier E

Opinion | Trump vs. Biden Is an American History Rerun - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-biden-race-2020-election.html

politics racial liberalism conservatism inequality resentment partisan gop Democratic party

shared by Javier E on 20 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • Not long ago, the struggle between racial liberalism and racial conservatism was a battle fought inside the Democratic and Republican parties. Now it’s a battle fought between the parties.
  • As African-Americans and other racial minorities increasingly occupy positions of influence and authority in American society, they also face backlash from those on the right whose opposition to ceding power is fierce, whether their opposition is veiled or out in the open. This opposition is now lodged solidly in the contemporary Republican Party, and the two parties regularly confront each other with rising intensity over the issue.
  • the importance of ethnicity and race in American politics is growing, not diminishing.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • Fanning the flames of racial animosity lies at the core of Trump’s election strategy, as it did in 2016.
  • “Race relations and racism have emerged as a focus of American politics in the last twenty years unlike at any time since the Civil Rights movement,” Herbert Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, wrote in an email.
  • The intensity of the conflict between the two parties over demographic change has been a driving force shaping politics, often in ways that on the surface seem peripheral to race.
  • Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, replied that what stands out to himis how animosity is driving the current versions of both parties. The electorate in 1988 was far more likely to view the other side with respect. Voters believed that both candidates sought to better the American way of life. Contrast this with today’s candidates who are both focused on corralling anger to their advantage, with Biden searching for those angry with Trump and Trump searching for angry middle-class whites.
  • “The race and religion gap jumps out to me, specifically white Christians vs. everyone else,” Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, wrote in an email describing how the parties have changed in recent decades.
  • While “the Republican Party doesn’t look terribly different than it did in the 1980s: about 88 percent were white Christians in 1984; in 2018, it’s still 75 percent.”In contrast, the Democrats have changed radically, Burge continued: “About 68 percent of Democrats were white Christians in 1984, today it’s 38 percent.”
  • “The new culture war is not abortion or same-sex marriage, the new culture war is about preserving a white, Christian America,” Jones said, addingThat’s what Trump’s really leading with. The "Make America Great Again” thing — the way that was heard by most white evangelical Protestants, white working-class folks, was saying: “I’m going to preserve the composition of the country.”
  • As the Republican Party has continued to remain fairly homogeneous and has organized itself, fueled by decades of deploying the so-called Southern Strategy, around a politics of white racial grievances, the Democratic Party has become the default party for those who do not share those grievances and has come to more closely reflect the changing demographics of the country.
  • As a result, the Democratic coalition, in terms of race and religion, is notably more diverse today than it was when Biden first ran for president in 1988. And issues of religious and racial identity are more salient today in defining the partisan divides.
  • By the start of 2020, Gallup found that 53 percent of Democrats called themselves liberal, while self-identified Democratic conservatives had shrunk to 11 percent and moderates fell to 35 percent.
  • As the share of white Christians has eroded within the Democratic Party, the share of Democrats describing themselves as liberal has more than doubled. In 1994, only a quarter of Democrats described themselves as liberal. An equal share called themselves conservatives, and 48 percent said they were moderates according to Gallup.
  • White Democrats are driving an increase in liberal self-identification: over the past 20 years, Gallup found that the percentage of white Democrats who said they were liberal grew by 20 points, from 34 to 54 percent. For Black Democrats, the increase was 9 points, from 29 to 38 percent, and for Hispanic Democrats, the increase was 8 points, from 25 to 33 percent.
  • In 1992, six out of ten Democrats had only a high school degrees or less, while 17 percent had taken some college courses and 24 percent had college degrees. 26 percent of Republican voters had degrees
  • Since then, the Democrats have eclipsed Republicans as the party of the college-educated. The percentage of Democrats with college degrees grew from 22 to 37 percent, from 1999 to 2019, according to Pew. Over the same period, the percentage of Republicans with college degrees barely changed, growing by one point to 27 percent.
  • In the presidential election of 2016, all of the Midwest except for Minnesota and Illinois turned red, along with 10 of the 11 Confederate states.
  • Compared with the Democratic Party of today, the Democratic Party of 30 years ago was geographically dispersed, and not concentrated on the two coasts. Look at the map of the 1992 election, with a sea of blue states in the Midwest and four that had been part of the confederacy.
  • “Basically the two parties have in just 10 years gone from near-parity on prosperity and income measures to stark, fast-moving divergence,”
  • With their output surging as a result of the big-city tilt of the decade’s ‘winner-take-most’ economy, Democratic districts have seen their medium household income soar in a decade — from $54,000 in 2008 to $61,000 in 2018. By contrast, the income level in Republican districts began slightly higher in 2008, but then declined from $55,000 to $53,000.
  • In just a decade, Democratic-voting districts, according to Muro’s analysis, “have seen their share of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree rise from 28.4 percent 2008 to 35.5 percent” while voters in Republican districts “have barely increased their bachelor’s degree attainment beyond 26.6 percent and have meanwhile become notably whiter and older.”
  • People are much more ‘one-dimensional’ in their preferences today. That is, there used to be many people that were liberals on economic issues and conservatives on cultural issues such as abortion or race (or vice versa). But today most people have views that largely fall upon a single ideological/partisan continuum. So if you’re liberal on cultural/social issues you’re probably also liberal on most economic issues.
  • conservatism and liberalism both became one dimensional — consistent across economics, race and sociocultural issues:
  • Political scientists like to compare the effect of “mutually reinforcing” and “crosscutting” divides in a polity, with the typical hypothesis being that crosscutting divides contain and dampen societal conflict, while mutually reinforcing divides deepen it.
  • In recent years, Kitschelt continued,political divisions in the United States became progressively less crosscutting than reinforcing and have now configured the country into two warlike camps, with deep mutual hatred and anger, more so than at any time since the Civil War.
  • In one camp, he wrote are thehighly educated; postindustrial economic sectors; nonreligious/atheist or non-Christian religion; almost all ethnic minorities; sympathy with non-heterosexual orientations; the more urban than rural; the distinctively younger; and the slightly more female, particularly if single
  • In the opposing camp are theless educated; industrial and agro-/extractive industries economic sectors; evangelical Christians; European stock whites; heterosexuals; the more rural than urban; the distinctively older; the slightly more male, particularly if married.
  • While left and right have multiple concerns, among the most prominent of these is race and its first cousin immigration, and both of these concerns have become more and more central to partisan politics.
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