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Contents contributed and discussions participated by clairemann

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clairemann

William Burns, a career diplomat, is Biden's choice to head the C.I.A. - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ns-choice-to-head-the-cia.html

policy US Politics

shared by clairemann on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • President-elect Joseph R. Biden has selected William J. Burns, a career State Department official who led the U.S. delegation in secret talks with Iran, to run the Central Intelligence Agency.
  • Mr. Burns has also long worked with Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s pick for national security adviser, and has been influential in helping foster the younger man’s career.
  • “shares my profound belief that intelligence must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation deserve our gratitude and respect.”
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  • Described as a “steady hand” and a “very effective firefighter,” by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mr. Burns spent 32 years at the State Department, where he was the American ambassador to Moscow and Jordan, and in high-level leadership positions in Washington.
  • For a time, Michael J. Morell, a former deputy director of the C.I.A., was considered the leading candidate for the top agency post. But some Democratic senators voiced public and private reservations.
  • defending torture
  • A key question will be how Mr. Burns can work with Avril D. Haines, Mr. Biden’s choice to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
clairemann

How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ler-app-trump-free-speech.html

policy US Politics gop trump

shared by clairemann on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet,” he said.
  • But Parler had a significant advantage: money.
  • In total, people downloaded Parler’s app more than 10 million times last year, with 80 percent in the United States, according to Sensor Tower, the app data firm.
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  • “I don’t feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform, considering we’re a neutral town square that just adheres to the law.”
  • There is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity,” Apple said in a statement. Google said, “We do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content.”
  • “It’s devastating,” Mr. Matze told Fox News on Sunday. “And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day.” He said he was struggling to find another company to host Parler’s website.
clairemann

Columbia Settles a Complicated Sexual Assault Case - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...columbia-sexual-assault.html

Culture policy economics Politics US trump

shared by clairemann on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • It turned into a federal lawsuit with unusually detailed documentation.
  • And now it has ended in a settlement that underscores the contentiousness of the national debate over campus sexual misconduct cases
  • Columbia has restored the diploma of Ben Feibleman, whom a three-member university panel had found responsible for sexually assaulting a female classmate. It has also agreed to pay him an undisclosed cash award and to send a statement to prospective employers describing him as an alumnus in good standing, Mr. Feibleman’s lawyer and a spokesman for the university said.
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  • whose campus sexual assault policies broadly favored believing the accusers, who are usually women.
  • It paints a picture of a campus culture in which students have become hyper-aware of the rules of academic sexual misconduct and worry about how every intimate encounter is going to look down the road.
  • Mr. Feibleman willingly sued under his own name, rather than a pseudonym, and because he had made a 30-minute audiotape of the sexual encounter. That recording became a centerpiece of his defense.
  • Columbia issued its verdict against Mr. Feibleman in June 2017, declining to give him his diploma. He filed a federal suit against the university in May 2019. That suit was settled after the Trump administration had adopted a regulation to give more due process protections to the accused, generally men, effective in August.
  • In the background was the presidential campaign, during which a tape surfaced of Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate for president, boasting about forcing himself on women.
  • But a growing movement of men’s rights activists said the guidance went too far because it did not give those accused a chance to defend themselves through basic rights like cross-examination.
  • “While Columbia’s disciplinary findings remain unchanged, the parties have agreed to a confidential monetary settlement, and Mr. Feibleman has additionally been awarded the master of science degree in journalism for which he satisfied all requirements in 2017,”
  • Ms. Lau asserted that people had to “read between the lines” to understand the full impact of the settlement. “You don’t pay somebody anything or award them a diploma if you think they are a rapist,” she said.
  • “Despite the aggressive and harrowing attempts to shame her through the court system, she has no regrets about coming forward with her complaint of sexual assault,” the woman’s lawyer, Iliana Konidaris, said.
  • “Do you own this for the rest of your life, but make sure that the truth is out there?” he asked, “Or do you keep this some secret and hope or just wait, living looking over your shoulder, waiting for someone to do a career assassination at any given point?”
  • Mr. Feibleman sees her daredevil behavior as evidence that she was in control of her faculties; Columbia saw it as evidence that she was intoxicated, according to court papers.They ended up in her bedroom, where, at 1:37 a.m., Mr. Feibleman pressed the record button on his cellphone. (He also chronicled part of the evening, including on the water tower, on his Nikon D750 camera.)
  • “No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No, wait. No. What’s going on?”
clairemann

Why Language Is One Of The Biggest Barriers To Home Ownership For Spanish-Speakers In T... - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...-us_n_5f15bf77c5b619afc404d010

Culture policy economics politics

shared by clairemann on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • However, language remains one of the biggest barriers to ownership for many Hispanic and Latinx immigrants who move here from such Spanish-speaking countries as Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Spain and El Salvador. Not only is purchasing a home one of the biggest financial decisions a person or family can make in their life, but the complex process requires research and guidance — services not often provided in Spanish.
  • Spanish-speaking immigrants have more than $1.7 trillion in buying power, yet continue to be underserved and underrepresented because vital documents such as prerequisite explanations, loan applications, appraisal documents and closing contracts are rarely presented in Spanish.
  • And because Hispanic and Latinx people are more likely to make less money than the national average, it takes them longer to save. This also means that they are buying homes later in life. 
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  • There are 12.3 million Hispanic people aged 38-to-53 living in the U.S. who have worked and saved their way to establish home buying power, and these are precisely the people who need help navigating the process in their own language. But the issues they face once they enter the market include not having real estate professionals who can guide them and cater to their unique needs. 
  • The need to have a translator (whether a family member, friend or colleague) complicates the process, and NAHREP reports that the number of Spanish-speaking real estate professionals needs to double in order to keep up with the demand.
  • The question remains: If realtors cannot help with translations and the needs of this community, how can home buyers truly understand the details around the process?
  • Many of these questions revolve around where to get started, how to apply for a mortgage loan, what is the required credit score and more. Mortgage lender Rocket Mortgage has created a Spanish language-based learning center to help first-time home buyers navigate the process.
  • Some of the most important terms that require translation that those in the Latinx/Hispanic communities don’t often see or hear translated are mortgage (“hipoteca”), interest rate (“tasa de interés”) appraisal (“evaluación” or “tasación”), and escrow (“fideicomiso”).
  • This opens up new opportunities for families to become better informed and further benefit from using loans to buy their first home in order to build wealth.
clairemann

GOP Election Attorney Rips Trump's Attack On Voting: 'As Un-American As It Gets' | Huff... - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...ack_n_5f9f91f4c5b6bef9f18f1a83

election US trump gop

shared by clairemann on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A longtime Republican attorney who worked for multiple presidential campaigns is calling out both President Donald Trump and members of his own party for their attacks on the election process and ballot counting.
  • “This is as un-American as it gets,” Benjamin L. Ginsberg, who worked for former President George W. Bush during the 2000 Florida recount and again in 2004, wrote in the Washington Post.
  • “Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party,” he wrote. “People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.” 
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  • “These are painful words for me to write,” he said.  “My party is destroying itself on the Altar of Trump,” he wrote. “Republican elected officials, party leaders and voters must recognize how harmful this is to the party’s long-term prospects.”
  • “My fellow Republicans, look what we’ve become. It is we who must fix this. Trump should not be reelected. Vote, but not for him.”
clairemann

Trump Suggests He Will Fire Anthony Fauci 'A Little Bit After' Election | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...uci_n_5f9f99bbc5b658b27c3c1319

election US pandemic trump

shared by clairemann on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump suggested Sunday he would fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a touchstone of scientific wisdom during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, shortly after the election.
  • As Trump spoke about the coronavirus and derided his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, the crowd began chanting “Fire Fauci!”, a notion the president seemed to be on board with:
  • Fauci has long warned that the country is headed in the wrong direction. In an interview last week, Fauci painted a grim picture for the nation after more than 99,000 Americans tested positive for the virus in a 24-hour period.
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  • “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation,” Fauci told The Washington Post. “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”
  • Fauci also praised Biden for taking the pandemic “seriously from a public health perspective.”
  • The remarks prompted anger and frustration from the Trump administration. White House spokesman Judd Deere told The New York Times that Fauci’s comments were “unacceptable” and broke “all norms.”
  • “[Fauci made] his political leanings known by praising the president’s opponent, exactly what the American people have come to expect from the Swamp,” Deere said.
  • “I just left a state that locked down. I left two of ‘em, and they’re not happy right now,” Trump said. “You know what’s going to happen to them, on Nov. 4, the day after, they’re gonna say ‘alright, we’re going to open up.’”
clairemann

Opinion | You're Waiting for Election Results. It's Agony. Here's What to Do. - The New... - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...election-day-stress-2020.html

politics

shared by clairemann on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Right now you probably feel like a spring that’s been tightly compressed under enormous weight. From the outside, it appears still. Inside it is coursing with intense potential (anxious!) energy just dying for release.
  • But the 2020 contest has raised the stakes, adding looming threats of disinformation and interference, contested results and a president who has repeatedly antagonized a deeply polarized electorate. It is an extremely stressful moment.
  • “For many people, they’ve voted and thus have taken what is perhaps the last action they can take to have an influence in the outcome,”
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  • Often, Mr. Markman noted, we are deploying something called “defensive pessimism,” which is a strategy our brains use in stressful situations where we can control the outcome, like, say, a big exam. “It’s a great coping strategy when you have agency because being defensively pessimistic forces you to study more,” Mr. Markman said. But in circumstances out of our control, it is an example of the mind working against its best interests and creating more anxiety.
  • “Defensive pessimism is creating a fictitious state. You’re feeling pessimistic but you don’t really believe it. Deep down you think your candidate will win, but you’re telling yourself they won’t, so when the actual outcome happens it’ll hurt less. But that’s not how it works. So really you’ll be paying the price twice. Once for anticipatory period and again if the results don’t go how you want,” he said.
  • An election. A pandemic. An economic crisis. A climate crisis. Mass protests for racial justice. It is a painful and tense moment in America right now. We’re all living through it together.
  • “Bracing for the worst makes sense when you lack agency,” she said. “We see it in even the most optimistic people because it protects us and also elevates the experience of good news.”
  • If you’re scared, allow yourself to feel that way for a moment. “Denying the pain and fear and anger leads to bad things down the road — the feelings always come out somewhere,”
  • Focusing on something desirable is a great strategy.” He suggests that planning and cooking your favorite meal or making plans to see friends in a socially distant way can help. “It’s not fiddling while Rome burns,” he told me. “There’ll be time to refocus thoughts to the election as returns come in, but planning and executing something you enjoy will reduce uncertainty between now and then.”
  • “Lots of people tell me they’re canceling everything during election week and I’m like, ‘No please don’t cancel. Schedule. If you have nothing to do you’ll only revert to worrying and obsessively consuming news,”
clairemann

Gunmen Storm Kabul University, Killing at Least 19 - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...kabul-university-attack.html

Culture politics history crisis

shared by clairemann on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen laid siege to Afghanistan’s largest university on Monday, killing at least 19 people and wounding more than a dozen others
  • Fardin Ahmadi, a social science student, said he was stuck in his classroom for two hours, until Afghan forces evacuated him and several others. “The situation was very bad,” Mr. Ahmadi said. “Every single student wanted to save their own life; we had forgotten about anything else.”
  • “During the attack on Kabul University, unfortunately, 19 were killed and 22 others were wounded,”
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  • The attack — the latest sign that spiraling violence in the Afghan countryside has made its way to the capital — followed a suicide bombing on Oct. 24 at an educational center in western Kabul. More than 40 people, most of them high school students from the Shiite Hazara ethnic minority, died in the attack, for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility.
  • The Islamic State has staged numerous high-profile attacks in Kabul in recent years, often striking government postings and Shiite Muslims at schools, places of worship and other easily infiltrated — or “soft” — targets.
  • Over the past three years, concerted U.S. and Afghan military campaigns beat back the Islamic State’s offshoot in Afghanistan, hemming in what remained of the extremists in the country’s mountainous east.
  • Islamic State tactics have often mimicked those introduced by the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, a group known for its ruthlessness, criminal networks and close ties to Al Qaeda.
  • The attack on the university followed the deadliest month in Afghanistan for civilians since September 2019, according to data compiled by The New York Times. At least 212 people were killed in October, and, according to recently released United Nations data, about 2,100 Afghan civilians died and 3,800 were wounded in the first nine months of the year.
clairemann

Opinion | It Was Election Day Eve and All Through the House … - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...election-day-biden-trump.html

politics US

shared by clairemann on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Everyone was pretty much freaking out.
  • Do you think the damage Donald Trump has done to the country is irreparable? Or can we find our way back to something approaching normality?
  • We’re just on the edge of getting rid of this man, after four years of total trauma. I think we deserve at least a couple of nights of cheer before we tackle the irreparable damage issue.
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  • I suspect history will come to think of “social media” as one of history’s more Orwellian terms. What it really should be called is antisocial media. If it has brought people closer together in virtual space, it has also made it easier for them to remain alone and isolated in physical space.
  • There’s one part of this I’ve been really haunted by: social media. Perfectly happy to acknowledge all the great progress in bringing folks together and giving voices outside the mainstream a better chance to be heard.
  • I’m a pretty optimistic person, so I’m just not going to buy into the idea that things can’t be fixed. I grew up during the civil rights and antiwar movements. Families torn apart by politics. And if all the problems certainly weren’t solved, I think we came out of that era a better country.
  • If it has made it easier for people to find communities of like-minded people, it has also made them more hostile to anyone who thinks a little differently from them.
  • That said, she was right — and I was wrong — about the danger to our democracy posed by the extraordinary concentration of financial and political power in Silicon Valley. There are a few ironies here, not the least of which is that much of the tech industry tends to lean pretty far to the left.
  • There’s also a serious problem when the industry tries to blur the difference between being platforms that merely provide a vehicle for people to say whatever they want (and are therefore not subject to libel laws) and publishers that regulate the content of the speech they host on their site.
  • The most important of them is that he’s steered clear of fighting the election along cultural and ideological lines and instead made it about steadiness and decency. I’m not sure Warren or Bernie Sanders would have resisted the temptation to take the culture-war bait that Trump keeps throwing at them.
  • But the idea of having a president who actually wants to declare war on global warming seems so revolutionary now, we’re temporarily on the very same page. Temporarily. Until, say, the first State of the Union address.
  • I suspect Biden will declare war on global warming the way past presidents declared war on cancer: By throwing a lot of money at it and hoping something works. He’ll bring America back into the Paris Climate Accord. He’ll spend more on renewables. Frankly, the most effective thing he could do is impose a carbon tax, which is something the Obama administration never had the political guts to do.
  • On the other hand, the G.O.P. incumbents Susan Collins and Martha McSally also look like political goners, though I’m having trouble squaring McSally’s lagging position in the race with Trump’s competitiveness in Arizona.
clairemann

Why the 2020 Election Could Come Down to the Courts | Time - 0 views

time.com/...ction-2020-lawsuits-litigation

US election gop courts politics SCOTUS

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • When Chief Justice John Roberts joined his three liberal colleagues on Monday to uphold Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court decision extending the deadline for accepting absentee ballots, Democrats were ecstatic.
  • But Democrats’ excitement was tempered by a lingering anxiety that their victory may be short-lived. The ruling remains in place only because the U.S. Supreme Court is deadlocked.
  • This past year, Democratic and Republican lawyers have filed hundreds of election-related lawsuits in state and federal courts, putting this election on track to become the most litigated in history.
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  • If the final vote tally ends up being close, election experts say that both Democrats and Republicans will likely take the matter to court—increasing the possibility of another Bush v. Gore-style stand-off in which lawyers and judges, rather than the voters, ultimately determine the next President.
  • They argue that making it easier to apply for, vote, deliver, and count mail ballots facilitates fraud, thereby diluting the votes of those who play by the rules. So far, the rival teams appear to be in a dead heat. “Depending on the week, you may say it’s a very good Democratic week or a very good Republican week,” says Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law Professor.
  • Nearly every time states have implemented a change, it’s been followed by a lawsuit. There have been at least 380 election-related lawsuits solely stemming from the pandemic, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.
  • To the extent that it can be simplified, this year’s election-related legal brawls can be distilled into two groups: a push to eliminate expanded mail-in voting policies on the basis that they would produce unprecedented fraud, and a push to ease the restrictions already in place.
  • Similar examples of litigation whiplash have played out across the country—each time banking a victory for the GOP.
  • Progressive watchdogs also point to another factor. Since taking office, Trump has appointed 53 appellate court judges, according to July data from the Pew Research Center, most of whom are reliably conservative and tend to sympathize with the Republicans’ legal positions.
  • Both Republicans and Democrats are actively preparing for the possibility of a pitched, multi-front court battle after Nov. 3. “We have been planning for any post-election litigation and recounts for well over a year and are extraordinarily well-positioned,”
  • Any post-Election Day litigation is most likely to involve swing states, crucial to determining the Electoral College winner, that end up having tight vote counts. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina are all high on the list of possibilities, and top election officials in these states are girding for battle.
clairemann

Why Women Vote for Democratic Presidential Candidates More | Time - 0 views

time.com/...gender-gap-politics

US history Culture election gop

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • As the electoral odds facing President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have continued to diverge in national and state polls, there’s at least one area where the divergence has been particularly striking: By early October, one national poll had Biden leading Trump by over 20 points among registered female voters; Trump and Biden were tied among likely male voters
  • Nationally, women in the U.S. have had the vote for 100 years. For the last 40 of those years, they have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in greater numbers than men have.
  • It took 60 years for women to vote in the same proportion as men. In 1980, for the first time since the passage of the 19th Amendment, women voted at the same rate as men. That was also the first time they voted noticeably differently from men.
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  • The party removed support for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from its platform that year, after 40 years of relatively consistent support. Further, for the first time since Roe v. Wade was decided, there was a clear divide between the candidates on support for abortion rights, as Reagan was on the record supporting a constitutional amendment banning them.
  • What then was driving the gap?
  • Political analysts attributed this loss to the GOP’s continuing failure to win over women voters.
  • In the end, the explanation Hinckley offered was predictable and mundane: women were voting their economic interests.
  • Reagan spent quite a bit of time and energy in 1982 and 1983 trying to appeal to women. He nominated women to his cabinet and put energy into promoting accomplishments like expanded tax credits for childcare. He was not, however, willing to address the issue that his pollsters had identified as driving the gender gap; he continued to cut government benefits.
  • Reagan never really tried to win over Black women, for example; instead, he focused on white homemakers and professionals and tried to persuade those women that his economic policies were in their best interests.
  • At the same time, Democrats have recognized women more broadly as a key element of their coalition. The Democratic platform has continuously paid proportionally more attention to women’s issues such as abortion rights and family leave than the GOP platform.
  • That these were both bills specifically addressing women’s economic interests is unlikely to be an accident. Women drive Democratic victories, and women’s economic experiences drive their votes.
  • If Joe Biden manages to win in November, it is likely to be with the largest gender gap ever recorded. The question that should be on voters’ minds is what legislation women want him to act on first.
clairemann

Halloween During a Pandemic: How People Celebrated in 1918 | Time - 0 views

time.com/...pandemic-halloween-1918

US pandemic history crisis Culture

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has already played out like a horror movie script, and yet some Americans are still determined to celebrate Halloween on Oct. 31—trading their normal face masks for costume masks, and planning socially distant festivities.
  • In the 1918 flu pandemic, as during this current pandemic, the virus hit different cities at different times. By Halloween, deaths in East Coast cities were on the decline, after a second wave that had been even deadlier and more contagious than the first wave the prior spring. Further west, the flu was raging.
  • One thing they make clear: it’s already hard enough to enforce safety protocols on a day like Halloween, but that challenge gets even more intense during a pandemic.
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  • In Rochester, N.Y. the Safety Commissioner told police to keep the noise levels down, out of consideration for the high number of people sick with flu or pneumonia who need “rest and quiet” to get better.
  • In Maryland, concerned that warm weather would bring people out and too close together, the Baltimore Health Commissioner banned “frolics” such as street celebrations, arguing that “while the epidemic’s sweep was becoming milder, it was still dangerous to permit large assemblages of persons.”
  • “ticklers and brushes are particularly forbidden, and confetti throwing will not be allowed because in contact with the hands clothes and the persons of the people throwing enhances the danger of spreading influenza,” reported the Oct. 30 Pittsburgh Gazette Times.
  • Indoor Halloween parties were banned as well. “Halloween parties are taboo, as are all other indoor gatherings, as the danger of spreading the influenza is still great,” declared Denver Mayor W.F.R. Mills, according to the Denver Post.
  • In Indianapolis, the top health official lifted the ban on public gatherings just for Halloween, allowing residents to “go ahead and have all the Halloween parties they wanted to,”
  • On the other hand, even where cities tried to target large gatherings, local newspaper coverage of scattered incidents of individual mischief-making suggests that the tricks part of trick-or-treating was especially pronounced.
  • It’s unclear what kind of effect these rowdy Halloweens had on case counts more than a century ago, especially given that it wasn’t the only event drawing people into crowds around that time: Election Day was just a week later, and people flocked to the streets again to celebrate the end of World War I just days after that.
  • Regardless of Halloween’s role, a long winter was ahead, and the flu did continue to spread at pandemic levels well into 1919, spiking in the following winter and in early 1920 as well. In the end, about 675,000 Americans and 50 million people died, and about 500 million people were infected globally.
clairemann

Here's Why Fears of Post-Election Chaos Are Overblown | Time - 0 views

time.com/...2020-election-fears

gop US politics election trump

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • In anxious tones, they ask about all of the election-related lawsuits, ballot deadlines, Electoral College technicalities and state-level hijinks. “People are so nervous, because they think this guy will do anything to stay in power,” he says.
  • Just 22% of Americans believe the election will be “free and fair,” according to a September Yahoo News/YouGov poll, compared with 46% who say it won’t be.
  • The President has sown doubt with groundless talk of a “rigged” election and repeated refusals to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed voting procedures, while the charged political climate has focused attention on the mechanics of an electoral system that’s shaky, underfunded and under intense strain. It would be naive to predict that nothing will go wrong.
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  • There are worst-case scenarios, and the President’s conduct has made them less unthinkable than usual. But the chances of their coming to pass are remote. Benjamin Ginsberg, who represented the GOP candidate in the 2000 recount, cautions against hysteria. “The panic seems to me to be way overblown,” he says.
  • What exactly are the worst-case scenarios? They start with the absence of a clear outcome on election night. Many states will be dealing with a massive increase in mail and absentee ballots, which take longer to process than in-person votes: they have to be removed from their envelopes, flattened for tabulation and checked for signatures and other technical requirements before they can be counted.
  • Three states loom largest in this concern: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. All three are key battlegrounds that have made a rapid and politically fraught push to expand voting by mail this year.
  • Other quirks, like a “naked ballot”–a legitimate ballot that a voter has failed to enclose in the required security envelope–may cause further uncertainty; a Pennsylvania court ruled this year that such ballots would not be counted in that state, which Trump won by just 44,000 votes. It all could add up to a presidential race that’s too close to call for days or weeks.
  • Current polls do not show a particularly tight race in those states, nor nationwide. And the polls have been far more stable, with far fewer undecided voters, than they were in 2016. Faster-counting states like Florida and Arizona, which have demonstrated the ability to rapidly tabulate large volumes of mail ballots, could well decide the election, rendering any uncertainty in the Rust Belt irrelevant.
  • The election’s outcome is unclear after days or weeks, and Trump is muddying the waters–lobbing lawsuits, disputing the count, accusing his opponents of cheating and convincing large swaths of the electorate that something untoward is going on behind the scenes.
  • Even if this happens, experts stress that Trump does not have the power to circumvent the nation’s labyrinthine election procedures by tweet. Elections are administered by state and local officials in thousands of jurisdictions, most of whom are experienced professionals with records of integrity.
  • There are well-tested processes in place for dealing with irregularities, challenges and contests. A candidate can’t demand a recount, for example, unless the tally is within a certain margin, which varies by state.
  • “While people may make claims to powers and make threats about what they may or may not do, the reality is that the candidates don’t have the power to determine the outcome of the election. It’s really important that voters understand that while a lot about our system is complicated, this isn’t a free-for-all.”
  • There’s a legal process to get there. The oft-invoked Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that resolved the 2000 standoff, was decided narrowly, specific to a particular situation in a particular place, notes Joshua Geltzer, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law. “These things Trump is saying–toss all the ballots, end the counting–those are not legal arguments,” he says.
  • Some fear a scenario in which, after weeks of uncertainty, the time comes for states to name electors to the Electoral College, and Republican legislators try to appoint their own rosters, overruling their state’s voters and forcing courts or Congress to resolve the matter.
  • “It’s unthinkably undemocratic to hold a popular vote for President and then nullify it if you don’t like the result,” says Adav Noti, chief of staff at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. While the possibility can’t be entirely dismissed given Republicans’ fealty to Trump, judges would likely take a dim view of such an effort, not to mention the political storm that would ensue.
  • The past few years have convinced many Americans to expect the unlikely, haunted by failures of imagination past. But when it comes to post-election mayhem, people’s imaginations may be getting the better of them.
  • “But by amplifying it as if it’s realistic, you create a very real problem of people not having faith in the system by which we choose our leaders. And that’s really harmful.”
clairemann

Jaime Harrison is Giving Lindsey Graham A Run for His Seat | Time - 0 views

time.com/...-lindsey-graham-south-carolina

gop US politics election

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • . A Democrat hasn’t won statewide office in South Carolina in more than a decade, President Donald Trump is easily outpacing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and the three-term incumbent, Republican Lindsey Graham, won his last re-election contest by more than 15 points.
  • Once a moderate Republican who was part of the bipartisan group that devised a 2013 immigration reform bill, Graham has transformed from a Donald Trump critic to one of the President’s closest allies.
  • Harrison has capitalized by focusing on local issues. “The urgency to get Supreme Court justices through, or tee time with the President, or going on Fox News—all those things are much higher on the priority level for Lindsey Graham than addressing the issues people are dealing with,”
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  • Harrison is hardly the first candidate to raise extraordinary amounts of money against a red-state incumbent whom Democrats detest.
  • Harrison’s campaign is “completely organized, it’s extremely efficient,” says Amanda Loveday, chief of staff of Unite the Country, a pro-Biden super PAC, and former executive director for the South Carolina Democratic Party while Harrison was party chair. “It had to be flawless, and it has been. It’s purely based on energizing the base and reminding South Carolinians, no matter their political stature, what Lindsey has not done for them.”
  • Harrison has become a ubiquitous presence in the state, with ads blanketing the airwaves. He’s presented himself as a unifier and pledged to grow the middle class and protect health care.
  • Given Graham’s political straits, Harrison also happens to be in the right place at the right time. “It takes that sort of alignment for somebody with a ‘D’ after their name to have a shot at the top of the ticket in South Carolina, and I think he does have a shot,”
  • Win or lose, Harrison has created openings for other Democrats in the state by drawing national money to the state that’s trickling down to other candidates.
  • “The investment that’s being made at the county level, the state level, and then both caucus levels is going to transform the makeup of the Democratic party for at least 10 years,” says South Carolina state Rep. JA Moore.
  • Harrison’s campaign did not provide a total amount of money it has transferred to the state Democratic Party or other Democratic entities in the state, but a scroll through party receipts shows the Harrison campaign has passed along millions. If Democrats can flip five state Senate seats, for example, they could take outright control of the chamber, which has even higher stakes this year due to redistricting.
  • “All of the things that a normal campaign needs to have to win, we just never had those resources and we had to rely on a lot of volunteers. But now because of Jaime’s campaign efforts, it’s a new day in terms of Democratic infrastructure,”
  • “Lindsey’s always had some measure of difficulty with the Republican base,” says former Republican Governor and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford. “I think when it comes down to actually pulling the lever between Lindsey, as much as they may not like him, and a Democrat, they’re going to go Lindsey.”
  • Other Republicans are similarly confident in Graham’s chances. “I’m not worried. Lindsey’s going to win. Senator Graham’s going to pull it out, he’ll win comfortably,” says Chad Connelly, former South Carolina GOP chairman. “The only reason the race was ever tight was money.”
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How DHS and ICE Are Making The Case for Trump's Re-Election | Time - 0 views

time.com/...-for-donald-trumps-re-election

gop trump US politics crisis policy

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  • In the final weeks leading up to the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have launched a highly unusual publicity blitz to spotlight immigration enforcement actions in key battleground states where President Donald Trump is trailing his opponent Joe Biden in the polls.
  • These public announcements by senior leaders ahead of the election, which former officials tell TIME are abnormal, if not unprecedented, have been held to publicize mostly routine immigration enforcement operations that would usually have been revealed with little fanfare.
  • Instead, DHS and ICE officials have used them as a platform to aggressively make the case for the president’s immigration policies, often taking on a markedly Trumpian tone and echoing parts of his stump speech.
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  • Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy Ken Cuccinelli have talked about immigrants taking American jobs, blasted Democrat-run sanctuary cities, touted “America First” and warned of “evil people who seek to travel to the United States with the intent of harming and killing Americans.”
  • In Phoenix last week, Wolf warned that there would be a surge in migration and an “unimaginable public health crisis” at the southern border if Trump were to lose the election — a series of nakedly political statements that stunned many former officials.
  • “The rhetoric that’s come out of Wolf and Cuccinelli is appearing to be a propaganda arm of the White House,”
  • The arrests were part of “Operation OPTical Illusion,” a crackdown on the federal Optional Tactical Training program, which allows international students to work in their field of study while on a U.S. student visa.
  • Cuccinelli directly tied this immigration enforcement action to Trump’s agenda, saying the arrests “will open up those jobs for American workers” and emphasizing that this “has been a very high priority for this President.”
  • Earlier in October, ICE put up bold black and red billboards in several parts of Pennsylvania, featuring the faces of six immigrants and their charges of burglary, robbery, and assault in big lettering. The agency described them as “at-large immigration violators who may pose a public safety threat” and said the campaign was meant to “educate the public about the dangers of non-cooperation policies.
  • “DHS is showing us a textbook example of why we have a federal law against government officials using their positions to support a political campaign,”
  • The politically significant locations of these press conferences, and the presence of senior leadership, means each event has been covered by local news and circulated on social media, likely reaching their intended in-state audience and beyond.
  • “the Trump administration is building [a] new wall and doing so faster than ever before” and “the Trump admin is putting America first by protecting American workers.” On Thursday, Wolf posted an almost 2-minute video about news media raising questions about Trump’s promised border wall in what was effectively a campaign ad, with the message: “They said it couldn’t be done…They were wrong. 400 times and counting.”
  • “These billboards are clearly intended to fuel anti-immigrant fervor one month before the election,”
  • “Top DHS officials are acting more like campaign surrogates than public servants, and they need to be held accountable.”
  • “I am deeply disturbed that ICE is spending government dollars and putting lives at risk in furtherance of what is described as a political messaging campaign,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, wrote in a letter to Pham in early October.
  • Immigration lawyers and advocates have raised concerns the agency has also been timing other law enforcement actions for political purposes. In September, ICE announced that 19 non-citizens in North Carolina had been charged with illegally voting in the 2016 election.
  • This time around, the ICE announcement about the charges — which came more than three years after the investigation started — were also “highly suspect, and likely to be politically driven,” says Helen Parsonage, an attorney who represents five of the non-citizens.
  • While Trump’s 2016 rallies were often filled with vivid accounts of immigrant crime, “build the wall” chants and infamous readings of a poem about a snake to illustrate the threat posed by immigrants and refugees, it’s a theme he’s rarely touched on in his 2020 rallies.
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Powerful Typhoon Lashes Philippines, Killing At Least 10 | Time - 0 views

time.com/...ppines-killing-numerous-people

crisis world Culture typhoon

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  • MANILA, Philippines — A super typhoon blew into the eastern Philippines with disastrous force Sunday, killing at least 10 people and triggering volcanic mudflows that engulfed about 150 houses before weakening as it blew away from the country, officials said.
  • Goni barreled through densely populated regions and threatened to sideswipe Manila, which shut down its main airport, but shifted southward Sunday night and spared the capital, the government weather agency said.
  • Ricardo Jalad, who heads the government’s disaster-response agency, had feared that the typhoon could wreak major damage due to its enormous force.
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  • One of the most powerful typhoons in the world this year, Goni evoked memories of Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages, swept ships inland and displaced more than 5 million in the central Philippines in November 2013.
  • Residents were warned of possible landslides, massive flooding, storm surges of up to 5 meters (16 feet) and powerful winds that can blow away shanties. But after hitting a mountain range and repeatedly slamming into coastal provinces, the typhoon gradually weakened, although it remained potentially deadly as it blew out into the South China Sea, forecasters said.
  • In a Manila gymnasium that was turned into an emergency shelter, COVID-19 outbreaks were an added worry of displaced residents. The Philippines has had more than 383,000 cases of the virus, the second-most in Southeast Asia behind Indonesia.
  • The Philippines is lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s also located on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
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How the Trump Campaign is Trying to Suppress the Black Vote | Time - 0 views

time.com/...black-voter-suppression-2020

US election trump crisis Culture policy

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  • The outrage and condemnation came fast in September when President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to commit voter fraud. “Let them send [a mail-in ballot] in, and let them go vote,” Trump said in Wilmington, N.C., urging backers to test the mechanics of North Carolina’s system by voting twice.
  • A U.S. President encouraging citizens to commit a felony is alarming enough, but in the next breath, Trump acknowledged intentions that were arguably more pernicious: he said Republicans in the state would also fight in court to halt “unsolicited votes.”
  • This election cycle, Trump allies have gone to court to defend a restrictive voter-ID law and to make it more difficult for voters to correct mistakes on mail-in ballots. Those measures have been shown to disproportionately affect Black voters.
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  • However appalling, this shouldn’t come as a great surprise. After Black people were brought to the New World as slaves, Black disenfranchisement was overt and uncontroversial.
  • The past decade has brought a resurgence of the practice, fueled by a Supreme Court decision and a President who thrives on racial division. And so today, amid a national reckoning about racial injustice, Trump’s re-election may hinge on the success of his efforts to suppress the voices of Black voters.
  • In June 2013, the Supreme Court overturned key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, declaring that measures in question were meant to address “decades-old problems” and that the Constitution was “not designed to punish for the past.”
  • Within hours, North Carolina GOP officials touted plans for a new law to curtail early voting, require ID at polling places and end same-day voter registration–all policies they understood would impact Black voters.
  • Over the past four years, such measures have become central tactics for Trump allies in the strategically critical state.
  • Maneuvers like these could be key to a Trump victory across the country, voting-rights advocates say. Black Americans are less likely to have the identification required by the wave of voter-ID laws enacted by Republican legislatures in the past decade.
  • Predominantly Black neighborhoods are more likely to face long lines on Election Day. Republican-aligned groups have spread misinformation to discourage Black voters, like the claim that early-voting data would be used for debt collection. The list goes on.
  • There’s more at stake in this election than whether this regression helps deliver a win to Trump. Racial voter suppression, once primarily a regional blight, has “metastasized across the country,” says Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “On the table will be whether this is in fact a sound democracy.”
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Donald Trump's Final Election Pitch: Ignore COVID-19 Spikes | Time - 0 views

time.com/...ald-trump-election-coronavirus

US election trump crisis pandemic

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  • In the final run up to Election Day, the United States has hit its worst spike in cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
  • In his closing message to Americans as a presidential candidate, President Donald Trump has mocked the deadly virus as a media conspiracy and insisted it is on its way out, despite having contracted it himself.
  • Trump continues to insist that a vaccine is “weeks” away and to talk about an economic rebound in 2021. But with a few days until Election Day and with millions of Americans already having cast their ballots, Trump is scoring low marks from voters on his handling of the pandemic that has claimed more than 230,000 lives in the United States.
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  • If Trump wins re-election despite those numbers, “It would… ultimately mean that people have decided to look ahead rather than look back,” says Mike DuHaime, a Republican political operative.
  • He has continued to hold rallies with thousands of supporters, despite restrictions on crowd size meant to slow the spread of the virus. And he continues to encourage his audiences to look beyond the current reality.
  • Trump joked that mask use was “politically correct,” falsely accused doctors of over reporting COVID-19 deaths to “make money,” inaccurately blamed the rise in cases on more testing, and said, “If you get it, you’re gonna get better,” which hasn’t been the case for hundreds of thousands of Americans and more than one million people worldwide.
  • Trump’s instinct to downplay the pandemic has been consistent since the early days of the virus’s spread in the United States. “What Trump did was decide to pretend like coronavirus wasn’t the most dominant thing in people’s lives,” says Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT).
  • In April, he suggested in a White House briefing that scientists should explore whether injecting disinfectants like bleach into the human body could cure COVID-19. (He later claimed the comment was sarcastic.) He refused to wear a mask in public for months, long after the consensus in the scientific community suggested mask-wearing was the single most effective way to slow the spread of the virus.
  • He routinely scowled when he saw aides wearing masks, and for months during the pandemic would say he couldn’t hear or understand officials speaking to him with masks on, according to two current and one former aide.
  • In September, the White House’s careless approach to safety during the pandemic caught up with it. In a matter of weeks, more than 30 people in Trump’s orbit came down with COVID-19, including senior counselor Hope Hicks, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, First Lady Melania Trump and the President.
  • As he received expensive and experimental treatments, he told his doctors not to mention the injury they saw to his lung scans and to delay releasing that his blood oxygen levels had dipped.
  • “I’m better — and maybe I’m immune — I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world.”
  • Whether Trump wants to acknowledge it or not, the pandemic has dominated American life for the better part of 2020. And his response will likely be top of mind for many voters when they head to the polls.
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Opinion | Why Are Republicans So Afraid of Voters? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...voting-rights-republicans.html

politics US

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  • There is no “both sides do it” when it comes to intentionally keeping Americans away from the polls.
  • As of Sunday afternoon, more than 93 million Americans had cast a ballot in the November elections. That’s about two-thirds of the total number of people who voted in 2016, and there are still two days until Election Day.
  • For decades, Americans have voted at depressingly low rates for a modern democracy. Even in a “good” year, more than one-third of all eligible voters don’t cast a ballot. In a bad year, that number can approach two-thirds.
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  • Why are so many Americans consistently missing in action on Election Day?
  • For many, it’s a choice. They are disillusioned with government, or they feel their vote doesn’t matter because politicians don’t listen to them anyway.
  • This strategy has become a central pillar of the G.O.P. platform. It is behind the party’s relentless push for certain state laws and practices — like strict voter-identification requirements and targeted voter purges — that claim to be about preserving electoral integrity but are in fact about suppressing turnout and voting among groups that lean Democratic.
  • Just in the past four years, tens of thousands of absentee ballots have been sent to the wrong addresses, and hundreds of thousands of voters have been wrongly purged from the rolls.
  • But across the country, the group most responsible for making voting harder, if not impossible, for millions of Americans is the Republican Party.
  • “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
  • For many more, the main obstacle is bureaucratic inertia.
  • The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has greenlit the Republicans’ anti-democratic power grabs. In 2013, by a 5-to-4 vote, the court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, giving free rein to states with long histories of racial discrimination in voting.
  • The strategy also is behind the partisan gerrymandering that Republican state lawmakers have mastered over the past decade
  • Republicans are battling from coast to coast to ensure that casting a ballot is as hard as it can be.
  • In Nevada, the Trump campaign and the state Republican Party have sued to stop counting mail-in ballots until observers can more closely monitor the signature-matching process.
  • The effort has been turbocharged by President Trump, who has spent the past year falsely attacking the integrity of mail-in ballots.
  • That’s why, if either of these laws is going to pass, it will require, at a minimum, voting out Republicans at every level who insist on suppressing the vote.
  • Representative democracy works only when a large majority of people participate in choosing their representatives. That can happen only when those in power agree that voting should be as easy and widely available as possible. Yet today, one of the two major political parties is convinced it cannot win on a level playing field — and will not even try.
  • What would a level playing field look like? For starters, it would have more polling places, more early-voting days and shorter voting lines.
  • Black neighborhoods wait 29 percent longer to cast ballots than voters in white neighborhoods.
  • A fair election would mean giving all states the necessary funds to implement automatic voter registration and to upgrade old voting machines.
  • To help ensure that voting is easier for everybody, the federal government needs to take action. Currently, there are two comprehensive voting-rights bills in Congress, the Voting Rights Amendment Act and H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act.
  • The second bill would, among other things, create a national voter-registration program; make it harder for states to purge voting rolls; and take gerrymandering away from self-interested state legislatures, putting the redistricting process in the hands of nonpartisan commissions.
  • When that tactic fails, Republicans turn to another tried-and-true one: voter intimidation. Frightening people, particularly Black people, away from the ballot box has a long history in the United States. Modern Republicans have done it so consistently that in 1982 a federal court barred the national party from engaging in any so-called anti-voter-fraud operations.
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GOP Tries To Save Its Senate Majority, With Or Without Trump | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...ity_n_5f9f0d9ec5b6bef9f18ea6d0

US voting election trump pandemic gop

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  • Senate Republicans are fighting to save their majority, a final election push against the onslaught of challengers in states once off limits to Democrats but now hotbeds of a potential backlash to President Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill.
  • Fueling the campaigns are the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, shifting regional demographics and, in some areas, simply the chance to turn the page on the divisive political climate
  • Without it, Joe Biden would face a potential wall of opposition to his agenda if the Democratic nominee won the White House.
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  • Republican incumbents are straining for survival from New England to the Deep South, in the heartland and the West and even Alaska.
  • With the chamber now split, 53-47, three or four seats will determine Senate control, depending on which party wins the White House.
  • What started as a lopsided election cycle with Republicans defending 23 seats, compared with 12 for Democrats, quickly became a more stark referendum on the president as Democrats reached deeper into Trump country and put the GOP on defense.
  • Suddenly some of the nation’s better-known senators — Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Susan Collins in Maine — faced strong reelection threats.
  • Only two Democratic seats are being seriously contested, while at least 10 GOP-held seats are at risk.
  • Felkel added: “You’d be hard pressed to admit we don’t have a Trump problem.”
  • The political landscape is quickly changing from six years ago when most of these senators last faced voters. It’s a reminder of how sharp the national mood has shifted in the Trump era.
  • Younger voters and more minorities are pushing some states toward Democrats, including in Colorado, where the parties have essentially stopped spending money for or against GOP Sen. Cory Gardner because it seems he is heading toward defeat by Democrat John Hickenlooper, a former governor.
  • GOP senators must balance an appeal to Trump’s most ardent supporters with outreach to voters largely in suburbs who are drifting away from the president and his tone .
  • Arizona could see two Democratic senators for the first time since last century if former astronaut Mark Kelly maintains his advantage over GOP Sen. Martha McSally for the seat held by the late Republican John McCain.
  • In Georgia, Trump calls David Perdue his favorite senator among the many who have jockeyed to join his golf outings and receive his private phone calls. But the first-term senator faces a surge of new voters in the state and Democrat Jon Ossoff is playing hardball.
  • Ossoff called Pedue a “crook” over the senator’s stock trades during the pandemic. Perdue shot back that the Ossoff would do anything to mislead Georgians about Democrats’ “radical and socialist” agenda.
  • Democrats have tapped into what some are calling a “green wave” — a new era of fundraising —
  • Competitive races are underway in Republican strongholds of Texas, Kansas and Alaska where little known Al Gross broke state records, Democrats said, in part with viral ads introducing voters to the military-veteran-turned-doctor who once fought off a grizzly bear.
  • The COVID crisis has shadowed the Senate races as Democrats linked Trump’s handling of the pandemic to the GOP’s repeated attempts to undo the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, particularly its insurance protections for those with preexisting medical conditions.
  • “In more places in the country than not, the president is not getting good marks” on that, Flaherty said, and it’s damaging Senate GOP candidates, “especially those in lockstep with the president.”
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