James.galbraith

After recommendations from the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas State Board of Social Workers Examiners announced that it will no longer prohibit social workers from turning away clients on the basis of disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. The rule comes as an amendment to the board’s code of conduct section which establishes when a social worker has the right to refuse service. While the state chapter of the National Association of Social Workers deemed the rule change “incredibly disheartening," Abbott's office said it was necessary and needed on the basis that "the code [of conduct's] nondiscrimination protections went beyond protections laid out in the state law that governs how and when the state may discipline social workers," The Texas Tribune reported.

The decision to change the rule was unanimously made by the state’s regulatory board on Oct.12. during a meeting held with the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council, which oversees agencies related to mental health. According to the board’s executive director Alice Bradford, the governor’s office recommended the change Friday three days before the board’s vote. Abbott’s office was not surprised the recommendation was taken, claiming that it aligned with other standards of law including the Occupations Code. “It’s not surprising that a board would align its rules with statutes passed by the Legislature,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said.

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According to The Texas Tribune, a state law last year granted the governor’s office more control over rules governing state-licensed professionals. While the board was given the approval to discriminate against clients based on sexual orientation in 2010, protections against such discrimination toward gender identity and expression were added in 2012. It wasn’t until the rule had been already changed that the board allowed for comments from the public.

Advocates quickly called the change in law for what it was, discriminatory. “It’s disturbing, even if it’s unintentional,” Will Francis, director of the Texas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers said, according to The Associated Press. “They created space for people to get the impression that this is allowed now. What the governor has done is put people with disabilities at risk for discrimination for no reason.” Francis added that this change gives the impression that people with disabilities can be discriminated against despite federal regulations in place to protect them.

Additionally, advocates noted that before removing the nondiscrimination protections no social workers were allegedly contacted or consulted for feedback. A Houston social worker who works with child trauma victims called the rule a “personal gut punch.” “There’s now a gray area between what’s legally allowed and ethically responsible,” Steven Parks told The Texas Tribune. “The law should never allow a social worker to legally do unethical things.”

More than 100 Texas counties have been identified with shortages of social workers amongst other health professionals. The implementation of this rule would severely affect access to care services to vulnerable clients in those areas. “There’s research to show that members of the queer community … are at higher risk for trauma, higher risk for all sorts of mental health conditions,” Parks said.

This isn’t the first time Texas has come under scrutiny for its discriminatory policies. The current legislature has opposed expanding protections for the disabled and LGBTQ community in not only mental health initiatives, but those related to employment, housing, and other areas of state law, The Texas Tribune noted. Additionally, Abbott’s recommendation followed failed attempts to pass legislation ending nondiscrimination requirements against people due to their religious faith.

This rule change greatly impacts both the disabled and LGBTQ community which not only lacks mental health services but also has difficulty accessing them. With such a rule in place, these vulnerable communities are less likely to seek out care and services. As a result, there is bound to be an increase in the stigma associated with mental health and other issues.

According to The Dallas Morning News, at least seven advocacy groups including Equality Texas, Transgender Education Network of Texas, National Association for Social Workers-Texas Chapter, Texas Freedom Network, ACLU of Texas, Lambda Legal, and the Human Rights Campaign released a joint statement Thursday against the board’s decision noting that without Abbott’s conservative leadership such an action could not have been taken. “Pro-discrimination groups couldn’t get this passed into law,” Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller said in the release, “but Gov. Abbott has done their bidding by pushing it through administratively in an obscure meeting when he thought few people were watching.”

Several political analysis stories recently have suggested that Donald Trump has struggled to find a closing argument, but they seem to be using a definition for closing argument that's far too narrow.

What they are trying to relay is the fact that Trump has failed to find a closer that will work in the more traditional sense of actually winning the race. But if you listen to Trump's rallies and campaign appearances over the past couple weeks, he has definitely landed on a pitch to voters that can be summed up in a single two-letter word: Me.

In Macon, Georgia, on Friday, Trump invited his rally goers to play arm-chair psychologists as he bore his soul to them. 

“Could you imagine if I lose?” he told them. “My whole life, what am I going to do? I’m going to say, 'I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics.' I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country. I don’t know.”

It's not the first time Trump has employed that inspiring "Can you imagine me losing?" schtick, and it likely won't be the last. And by the by: Yes, yes we can imagine it. Thank you very much.

Trump is also peppering that vision of failure with a new round of pointedly personal grievances. On a campaign call Monday, Trump lit into one of his top pandemic experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci, referring to him as a "disaster."

"People are tired of COVID," Trump said, plugging his campaign events as the "biggest rallies I've ever had" despite the pandemic. "People are saying, whatever. Just leave us alone. They're tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots."

Naturally, Trump isn't worried about infecting his faithful or even leaving a trail of death behind him. He wants his rallies, dammit, and everyone else better get out of the way.

Trump also dropped a bit of delightful bullying into a Monday stump speech in Arizona, focusing in on one of the NBC journalists who is supposed to moderate Thursday's debate (which may well get canceled now that moderators can cut Trump's mic). "Another great one—Kristen Welker. She's a radical Democrat," Trump told revelers in Arizona. "She's been screaming questions at me for a long time. She's no good."

But Trump, just getting warmed up on his it's-all-about-me riff, suddenly started waxing nostalgic about last week’s NBC town hall.

"How about the one who came up and said, I love your smile. You're so handsome, you're so handsome, you're so handsome when you smile," Trump said, recalling a voter who inexplicably prefaced her question with admiration for Trump's winsome grin.

"Really, this woman liked me. I know when someone likes me," Trump continued, before explaining that NBC executives must have gotten to her following the event because she ultimately said she planned to vote for Joe Biden.

"They told her, you can't do that. You got to say bad things. I have no doubt, because I watched her interviewed afterwards," Trump said. "She hated my guts. She was like... I'm gonna vote for Biden."

Trump is the closing argument. It's all about him, who likes him, who's nice to him, who's voting for him. It's certainly not about voters' ridiculous needs. And if they thought their observations mattered— they had better think again. Trump, and Trump alone will be the judge of what matters and what doesn't. And just to be perfectly clear, voters don't.

Watch Trump go off on Welker and then descend into a sea of self pity over the voter who turned against him:

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Joe Biden’s transition team is vetting a handful of Republicans for potential Cabinet positions — despite doubts it will win him new support from the right and the risk it will enrage the left.

Reaching across the aisle to pick senior members of his administration could shore up Biden's credentials as a unity candidate, a message he's made a cornerstone of his campaign. Past presidents including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have all done the same. But that tradition died with President Donald Trump, and liberal Democrats are already warning that a Republican pick, even a moderate one, could sow distrust within the party before Biden even takes office.

“My primary concern is that he involves people in the Cabinet who push back against corporate power and support a massive economic stimulus and the broad provision of health care,” said David Segal, the executive director of Demand Progress, a liberal advocacy group. “Unfortunately, there are no prominent Republicans I know of who are on board with that agenda.”

Nevertheless, one person close to the Biden transition said it remains “a priority to have options” from different parts of the ideological spectrum for the former vice president to consider.

That person and another official familiar with the transition deliberations confirmed to POLITICO that Biden staffers are analyzing some Republicans’ backgrounds and resumes as they compile shortlists of candidates for high-profile Cabinet positions. The goal is to have some GOP options among the finalists that Biden would choose from after the election.

Among the names being floated for possible Biden Cabinet posts are Meg Whitman, the CEO of Quibi and former CEO of eBay, and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both of whom spoke at August’s Democratic National Convention. Massachusetts GOP Gov. Charlie Baker and former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have also been mentioned, as has former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who resigned from Congress in 2018 and became a lobbyist.

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Biden transition said only that the team is not making any personnel decisions before the Nov. 3 election, but stressed that “diversity of ideology and background is a core value of the transition.”

Nominating a Republican to the Cabinet would be the latest in a series of steps Biden has taken to extend an olive branch across the aisle. His campaign regularly holds calls with a group of officials who have endorsed him, including Republicans. After giving multiple GOP supporters prime speaking slots at his August convention, he tapped others for roles on his transition team, including Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Republican Sen. John McCain.

“This plays to Joe Biden’s comfort zone,” said one former Republican member of Congress who is close to the Biden transition. “If you’re Joe Biden, of course you’re going to want to expand your base a little bit, show some outreach to the other side.”

Tapping a GOP candidate to lead a federal agency could be an easy and early way to reward Republicans who endorsed him before the election and signal his intent to bridge the country’s partisan divide. But it could also alienate Democrats already worried whether a nominee who has long styled himself as a moderate will pursue progressive policies once in office.

“I don’t understand why someone who says, ‘I am the Democratic Party,’ would then hand benefits to someone who’s not a Democrat,” said Jeff Hauser, director of the the Revolving Door Project, a left-leaning advocacy group he founded in 2015 to scrutinize executive branch appointees.

Already, members of the Democratic left are making their opinions known. Left-wing lawmakers and progressive groups on Friday signed a letter saying no corporate executives or lobbyists should have Senate-confirmed positions in a Biden administration. And Segal and other progressive leaders say they and their supporters are ready to loudly oppose the nomination of anyone with a record they find objectionable — be they Republicans or Democrats.

“We need to have people in those positions who will rise to the occasion much like they did in the New Deal era,” said Larry Cohen, the president of the board of Bernie Sanders’ organizing group Our Revolution.

Despite their criticisms, progressives have collected a handful of wins on the Biden transition. Former officials note that it’s customary to vet potential candidates from across the aisle. And Biden allies say that for a nominee who will be looking to appoint the most diverse Cabinet in history, ideological diversity should be a part of those considerations.

Plus, for a Democratic presidential nominee who has won significant support from former elected Republican leaders, Biden has an even broader pool of GOP candidates to choose from than his predecessors, supporters say.

Some Cabinet positions have historically been considered less ideological than others, a “safe” slot to fill with a member of the opposite party. Both Obama and Bush appointed Transportation secretaries from the other party, for example. The Transportation Department, however, is expected to have a higher profile in a potential Biden administration that wants to focus on a major infrastructure package.

National security is another traditional spot for cross-party appointments. Clinton tapped Republican Bill Cohen to lead the Department of Defense, while Obama had two GOP officials in that role: Robert Gates and Chuck Hagel.

Gates was a holdover from the Bush administration, whom Obama kept on as a bipartisan gesture. But Gates didn’t always agree with the president’s decisions and offered harsh critiques of Obama and others in the Cabinet in a memoir he released after leaving the administration. Gates reserved some of his harshest criticism for Biden, saying the vice president had been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Gates’ comments and actions remain fresh on Biden aides’ minds as they consider the makeup of the Cabinet and whether tapping a Republican could later backfire.

Progressives, meanwhile, say it’s too big a risk to install a conservative in any agency in the current political environment.

“In addition to having more than a decade of corporatists running domestic policy to the detriment of everyday Americans, we also need to confront a generation of unhinged militarism and mass illegal unconstitutional surveillance,” Segal said. “There are relatively few people from either party who are likely to be great on those issues ... But to the extent that there are those people, they’re in the Democratic party.”

Even some Republicans stumping for his election say including a Republican in the new administration may have a higher cost than benefit for Biden.

Tim Miller, who leads the group Republican Voters Against Trump, said his organization isn’t pushing for any GOP Cabinet pics, and that crossing the aisle for some nominations won't matter much to the swing voters his group has been in contact with all year.

“I don’t think they care who the deputy secretary of Commerce is in a new administration,” he said, laughing. “They do care whether he will work with Republicans or whether he will allow the far left to control the administration.”

Progressives and public policy experts are also skeptical that appointing a Republican would win Biden any goodwill among rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, whose votes he may need to pass major pieces of his agenda.

As evidence, some point to congressional Republicans’ unwillingness to support Obama’s legislation and nominees. “To defeat Trump, we need the broadest possible coalition,” Cohen said. “But to govern the country, there’s no way we can go back to believing we’re going to get Republican votes — we spent eight years trying and failing on that front.”

Cohen added that there may be some Republicans more or less aligned with Biden on policy who could “do a great job” in some positions. “Including them is a nice gesture,” he said. “But it won’t help get anything passed on Capitol Hill.”

Still, people in Biden’s circle expect him to tap someone from the GOP for a Cabinet position.

"I have no doubt that someone is vetting options for him,” one transition adviser and longtime ally told POLITICO. “I would be surprised if that wasn’t something he was considering.”

The former vice president in late April said he would not have any limitations on tapping a Republican “if they’re the best-qualified person to do it.”

He also regularly invokes his ability to work with the GOP. At a town hall hosted by ABC News on Thursday, Biden said the first thing he will do if elected president will be to call Republican allies and say, “‘Let's get together. We've got to figure out how we're going to move forward here.’ Because there are so many things we really do agree on.”

Biden allies believe working across the aisle will make it possible to carry out a sweeping agenda on health care and the economy. But unlike his predecessors, Biden is now facing a Republican party that has “cleaved in two,” cautioned Matt Bennett, executive vice president of public affairs at the centrist think tank Third Way — those with and those against Trump.

That division, Bennett said, could make it harder than it once was to bring the parties together through something like a Cabinet position, raising the cost of the move while lowering the benefit.

“You get the downside of having someone in your Cabinet that’s not aligned with you ideologically and alienates the left, without getting the upside of bipartisanship,” Bennett said. “Does nominating a Never Trumper really bring people together?"

In this episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew compares Joe Biden’s lead now with Hillary Clinton’s in 2016 and considers the agenda Democrats might pursue if they win the presidency, House and Senate in November.

On a call Monday, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien revealed the campaign’s total ad buy for the last two weeks of the presidential race would be a whopping a paltry $55 million ... split between no fewer than 11 states.

Um, just wow. And that's not only the Trump campaign, it represents coordinated spending with the Republican National Committee (RNC) too. Far from being a muscular way to close out the race, it feels more like a cry for help. By comparison, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said last week that she still anticipates raising another $234 million through the election.

If you’ve donated to the Biden-Harris ticket, this is a time to feel very good about every penny spent. Why not kick in another $2 right now and feel even better?

The 11 states included on the target list for both entities are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine-2, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

According to an Axios article last week, Stepien views Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and Maine's 2nd district as the foundation of their path to 270—in other words, must gets. In fact, the article quoted Stepien calling that line up the “easy part,” but apparently not so easy that they're forgoing dropping money in all four supposed gimmes. 

As New York Times journalist Shane Goldmacher, who was on the call, noted, "On the one hand, Stepien says he is 'certain' that they are winning Ohio and Iowa. On the other hand, he announces the campaign will be up with ads in those two states in final two weeks." Go figure.

One state the Trump campaign appears to have finally given up on altogether is Minnesota. Earlier on Monday, the Trump camp had announced cancelling ad buys in several Midwestern states even as they were preparing to reinvest in some of them through this coordinated ad buy with the RNC. But Minnesota, which has pretty much always been a pipe dream for Team Trump, was dropped altogether.

Even before this final Trump ad buy in the closing weeks, Biden's ad spending had outpaced Trump's by a 2-to-1 ratio for months, according to The New York Times. In a review of the two campaigns' spending in 10 battleground states, the only state where Trump outspent Biden was Georgia—which doesn't exactly jibe with that state's inclusion in Stepien's so-called "easy” list.

Biden's spending strategy has clearly centered on the Midwest. "His dominance is most pronounced in three critical swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where he spent about $53 million to Mr. Trump’s $17 million over the past month largely on ads assailing the president’s handling of the virus as well as the economy and taxes," writes the Times.

And while Trump initially enjoyed a digital ad advantage in the early part of the campaign, Biden has steadily closed that gap in recent months, achieving near parity in the last 30 days at $50 million for each ad campaign on Google and Facebook, according to the Times.

What is perhaps most interesting in these final weeks is just how small Trump is playing even as Team Biden has played very big—and not just in terms of overall spending. As this Politico piece explains, the Biden campaign has seen so many paths to 270 open up that in some cases they realized it would be more cost effective to make national buys rather than spending astronomical amounts in smaller battleground markets. It’s a worth a read. 

Under normal circumstances, most campaigns at this point would be making buys to leverage their position in 10 or even fewer states. But the Biden campaign realized that making some national buys through the networks would actually cost only slightly more, for instance, than purchasing air time in states with major Senate races like Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, where pricing had gone through the roof. The big upside of the national buys was that they had the advantage of not only reaching the desired markets in key battlegrounds but also establishing a Biden presence in states that were newly on the radar, like Texas.

“We are looking at a very wide map right now,” Becca Siegel, the Biden campaign’s chief analytics officer, said. “Normally at this stage of the campaign, we would be narrowing in. But at this stage of the campaign, we have a lot of pathways that have opened up.”

So as Trump closes out with a whimper, Biden is heading out with a roar, and his sizable cash advantage has made all that possible. 

From politically apathetic to pants on fire urgency, Lori Goldman of Troy, Michigan, is among the ranks of suburban women who have felt called to duty by the existential threat to America that is Donald Trump.

Dressed in yoga pants and sneakers and whizzing through suburban streets on the state’s east side to leave no door unknocked, Goldman has taken on the very mantra that many Democratic strategists have employed to help fight the complacency that some believe led to Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016.

“We take nothing for granted,” she told her canvassing partner, according to the Associated Press. “They say Joe Biden is ahead. Nope. We work like Biden is behind 20 points in every state.”

These suburban women stories are everywhere now and they tell a similar tale of mostly white suburban women—some of whom voted Trump in 2016 and others of whom did not—feeling called to effect a different outcome for themselves, for their family, for other families, and for the nation in 2020.

Goldman founded the group Fems for Dems in early 2016 with an email to a few hundred of her friends. Now the group boasts nearly 9,000 members. She may drink Aperol spritzers and have her sights trained on the tony Detroit suburbs of Michigan's Oakland County, but make no mistake—she's taking no prisoners. 

“I hate the saying, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ That’s loser talk,” she says. “You can be right all day, but if you’re not winning, what’s the point?”

Clinton actually did win Oakland County by about eight points in 2016, but she did so by fewer points than Barack Obama in 2012. The difference in their win margins alone could have cut Trump's 10,700-vote triumph in the state by half, according to the AP.

Two years later, Democratic gubernatorial candidate and now-governor Gretchen Whitmer doubled Clinton's margin in the county, while Democrat Elissa Slotkin unseated a GOP incumbent to represent the district. And while Goldman has successfully grown her group of "dumpy, middle-aged housewives” as she once called them, she is simultaneously dismayed by how fatigued many of her members grown by the daily the churn of Trump crazy. 

“Our house is on fire,” Goldman says.

Portraits of transformation like that of Goldman abound in these stories. And some of those transitions include a more comprehensive outlook on what their vote means for the nation rather than just their own self interests. 

Kate Rabinovitch of Westerville, Ohio, reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016 and now spends all her in-between moments texting with friends and family and generating social media posts to turn the tide against him. 

Rabinovitch, who has a 4-year-old son, has many objections to Trump, but she also pinpointed the killing of George Floyd as a seminal moment for her. Before February, she said, racism wasn't a key issue for her. But watching that video really impressed upon her the structural racism that continues to plague the country.

“I have to think of everybody,” Rabinovitch told The New York Times. “So if I’m voting against Donald Trump, that’s not a vote for me or a vote for my son. That’s a vote for everyone. Everyone’s sons.”

Ohio-based Katie Paris founded Red, Wine, and Blue, an all-female team of suburbanites working to organize suburban women for Ohio Democrats. The Times describes Paris' political ethos as one part Obama strategist David Plouffe, one part psychological researcher Brené Brown—a combination of clear-eyed data analysis and vulnerable peer conversations. She also specifically feels the pull of white women needing to do their part to turn the country around.

“We can’t leave this all on Black voters to carry all the weight in Ohio,” said Paris, who is white. “It’s going to take all of us.”

And while all these women are making an immediate push to oust Trump, many of them also seem committed to a longer haul vision of transforming the country—or at least a sustained change in their own political alignments that could create long-term trouble for Republicans.

“I cannot imagine a Republican candidate that I would rally behind,” says Ohioan Hannah Dasgupta, a young mother of two who grew up in a conservative home. “Wow, that’s mind-blowing to think about. That’s a huge departure.”

Sen. David Perdue was playing to a crowd of Trump supporters Friday evening when he made a big show of mispronouncing Sen. Kamala Harris' name. “Kamala? Kamala? Kamala-mala-mala? I don’t know. Whatever,” Perdue said of a woman who is not only one of his coworkers in the United States Senate but serves on the Senate Budget Committee with him.

While the Trump crowd ate it up, Perdue’s naked racism reverberated in a way that will be attached to his name for years to come. His opponent, Jon Ossoff, quickly raised $1.8 million after the comment, but more significantly, Perdue moved people to speak out against this specific form of racism, the refusal to treat another person seriously enough even to say their name correctly.

Enough with this racist party. Can you give $3 to each Daily Kos-endorsed Senate candidate for the final push to November 3?

The first person to use the #MyNameIs hashtag in this context appears to have been—based on a Twitter search—lawyer Subodh Chandra late Saturday morning, but it really took off when Gautam Raghavan, a member of the Biden transition team, joined in and was subsequently quote-tweeted by Meena Harris, niece of Kamala. Thousands of people by now have tweeted about their names, in many if not most cases people from immigrant backgrounds who have faced the same sneering racism or casual disdain for their right to be called by their names. 

They included famous actors like Daniel Dae Kim, politicians like Rep. Pramila Jayapal, athletes like Michelle Kwan, authors like Min Jin Lee, and many many people you’ve never heard of whose names deserve your respect nonetheless. Rep. Ayanna Pressley wrote of her name that her mother “told me I’d make history and the world would learn how to say it right.” Taking part, too, was Virginia Del. Danica Roem, describing how her name has been used against her as a transgender woman.

Donald Trump, behind in the polls and losing huge chunks of senior and women voters because of his horrendous coronavirus response, decided to make it all worse by attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci on a campaign call Monday that reporters were included in. Not only included in—told by Trump to amplify his attack on the world-renowned scientist and epidemiologist. "Fauci's a disaster," Trump grumbled, and all the public health officials are "idiots."

"People are tired of Covid. People are saying, 'Whatever, just leave us alone.' People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots," Trump said on the call, which means Trump is tired of coronavirus and the damage he's inflicted on himself by not taking it seriously. "He's been here for, like, 500 years. He's like this wonderful sage telling us how—Fauci, if we listened to him, we'd have 700,000 [or] 800,000 deaths." Sure. Then he got to his biggest criticism after Fauci's 60 Minutes interview Sunday, in which Fauci said he was "absolutely not" surprised Trump caught the virus at the Rose Garden superspreader party. Fauci's a "disaster," Trump told the call participants, and added that "every time he goes on television, there's always a bomb. But there's a bigger bomb if you fire him."

Just to make sure that message got out there, Trump said: "If there’s a reporter on, you can have it just the way I said it. I couldn't care less." Which presumably means Fauci isn't going to be fired however much Trump hates him and science. But the call wasn't enough for Trump—he had to go on Twitter a few hours later to attack Fauci some more, this time over Fauci's contention on 60 Minutes that the White House had been muzzling him, frequently refusing to allow him to go on television. "Dr.Tony [sic] Fauci says we don't allow him to do television, and yet I saw him last night on @60Minutes, and he seems to get more airtime than anybody since the late, great, Bob Hope. All I ask of Tony is that he make better decisions. He said 'no masks & let China in.'" Bob Hope? What the hell does Bob Hope have to do with anything? Then he added second tweet and a swipe out of left field about Fauci's wild first pitch at a Nationals game back in July. Clearly, Trump is still stewing being overlooked for that honor.

He also seems to be stewing about Fauci's simple existence and maybe, possibly the truths Fauci tells the American people. On the 60 Minutes broadcast, Fauci said that Trump won't wear a mask because he "equates wearing a mask with weakness," and that it is "less an anti-science [position] than it’s more a statement." That statement is "You know, a statement of strength," Fauci said. "Like, 'We're strong. We don't need a mask.' That kind of thing." The kind of thing that puts you in the hospital being pumped with all kinds of experimental drugs. Fauci addressed that as well, saying Trump believed in science enough to go to Walter Reed. "Deep down," Fauci said, he "believes in science. […] If he didn't he would not have entrusted his health to the very competent physicians at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center." Sure, he believes in it to save his own rusty skin, the hell with the rest of the country.

As well as how unfair the universe has been to him, personally. So he's taking that anger out on the people who are telling him the truth about this virus every day. He's been on a tear against science since his rally Sunday, where he mocked former Vice President Joe Biden for, well, listening to scientists about this pandemic and how to respond to it.

Massachusetts State Police in riot gear move the crowd from around Fenway Park after 2013 World Series. | Rick Friedman/Getty Images

A Massachusetts state trooper confessed to running background checks for drug dealers. He’s still on the force.

The Massachusetts State Police has allowed dozens of officers to remain on active duty after internal investigations found they had broken the law, a Boston Globe investigation uncovered.

The Globe’s Matt Rocheleau reviewed the Massachusetts State Police Department’s internal affairs files and discovered that the force’s internal investigators had found “29 sustained charges for assault and battery; 19 alcohol and drug violations, including four OUIs; 17 charges for harassment, including three for sexual harassment; [and] another 17 for improperly using the state’s criminal background check system” against active troopers.

Despite those alleged criminal actions — and other alleged policy violations, like lying to internal investigators or judges and using excessive force — Rocheleau found that “the agency rarely fires troopers almost no matter what they have done.” And only a “handful” of the potentially criminal transgressions had been referred to prosecutors. In fact, the Massachusetts attorney general’s spokesperson told the Globe that “the State Police had shared none of those details with the office.”

The investigation reveals a growing consensus across the country that police officers aren’t facing appropriate consequences for intolerable behavior.

One officer, Trooper Paul Higgins, has committed dozens of crimes according to the Globe’s review of the police’s internal investigations. In 2013, he was told he could be fired for his “penchant for hanging out with and helping criminals” which had been “known to State Police leaders for years.” The conversation apparently had no effect, as Globe reporting reveals:

Despite that confrontation and warning, Higgins allegedly carried on. Two years later, the department received a letter from the US attorney’s office saying Higgins was the focus of a federal criminal investigation and had admitted to Drug Enforcement Administration agents that he ran background checks on behalf of drug-dealing bookies. In at least one case, records show, Higgins provided the background check information to let a criminal know that local police had run his license plate.

State Police placed him on paid leave.

This pattern is not unique to Boston. The Mercury News reported that “more than 80 law enforcement officers working today in California are convicted criminals, with rap sheets that include everything from animal cruelty to manslaughter.” The Baltimore Sun reported on a case where a police officer was caught by his own body camera “placing drugs in a vacant lot and then acting as if he’d just discovered them”; he is still on the force. The Minnesota Star-Tribune reported that hundreds of police officers “convicted of criminal offenses in the past two decades ... kept their state law enforcement licenses.”

How police unions shield officers from accountability

Rocheleau’s reporting doesn’t zero in on the root causes of this culture of permissiveness, beyond deep flaws and ineffectiveness in the internal affairs investigative process, but Massachusetts police unions have loudly opposed proposed accountability measures.

Police unions also have a well-documented role in shielding their members from repercussions and making it very difficult to fire members. Vox’s Dylan Matthews has gone over the intense appeals process by which police officers are able to fend off accountability. That combined with rules like “giving officers a heads-up that they will be interviewed by internal affairs detectives or other investigators ... about a case of potential wrongdoing” work to make it hard for even determined police departments to levy punishments on lawbreakers. Matthews reported on research suggesting unions are increasing violent misconduct:

University of Chicago Law School’s Dhammika Dharmapala, Richard McAdams, and John Rappaport looked at a 2003 Florida Supreme Court decision that gave collective bargaining rights to sheriffs’ deputies. They use police departments, which were unaffected, as a control group, and find that in the wake of the decision, misconduct violations rose in sheriff’s offices but not in police departments. That suggests that collective bargaining itself caused a rise in misconduct, perhaps by making sheriff’s deputies feel like they could get away with it.

Police unions, “under the duty of fair representation covered by the National Labor Relations Act and state laws,” are legally required “to give the best possible protections, including legal aid and support in job negotiations, to all their members,” my colleague German Lopez has reported. That means police officers know they have strong legal representation waiting for them no matter what situation they get into, which some critics say has “helped build a culture in which police feel they can get away with nearly anything.”

In Massachusetts, officers appear to have reason to feel that way.

Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

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Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s desperation in his suddenly very competitive race against MJ Hegar in Texas is just getting plain embarrassing now, following the latest chapter in his “I’ve actually opposed the president behind the scenes, no seriously” saga. And this new one’s really quite the doozy.

First, Cornyn claimed that he’s actually supported legalization for undocumented youth, even though he’s given the thumbs down to it on the Senate floor. Then he claimed he’s actually been fighting for them behind the scenes, but just hadn’t said anything publicly. Now in another stupid lie, Cornyn claims he actually opposed Donald Trump’s wall swindling, but just privately. “Cornyn’s voting record and public statements show the exact opposite,” immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice said in a statement. Shocking.

As Daily Kos’ Hunter noted during the weekend, Cornyn really wanted the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board to know “that Actually, he has ‘disagreed’ with Donald Blowhard Corruption Magnet on at least several important Republican things during these last four years. It is just that he did it in ‘private,’ because reasons.” And when some polling has found that Texas voters oppose this racist eyesore (in this instance we’re talking about the wall, not Cornyn), just way to go for standing up for them, right?

The truth is that when Cornyn had an actual chance to stand up to Trump and oppose his wall swindling using the power of his Senate vote, Cornyn collapsed like the wall itself.

“In September 2019, Congress attempted to overturn Trump’s emergency declaration and 12 Senate Republicans voted against Trump, but Senator Cornyn was not among them,” America’s Voice said. “Instead, he sided with Trump and voted against the joint resolution. Cornyn then was conveniently absent for the October 2019 Senate vote seeking to overturn President Trump’s veto of the joint resolution.”

Oh, John. John, John, John John. John. We know that you like to portray yourself as a serious voice in the Senate (and having Ted Cruz serving alongside you certainly helps you a lot in that, lucky you), but to spout these ridiculous and easily disprovable lies at Texans makes you no different than the impeached president who spouts lies at all Americans every day. He lies to us because he thinks we’re stupid and he can get away with it, and that’s what you’re doing to Texans too. Texas deserves better, America’s Voice Texas-based campaigns manager Mario Carrillo said.

“The simplest explanation is usually the right one: John Cornyn is in a tough re-election fight in a rapidly diversifying and competitive Texas and he knows the unpopularity of his real record of opposing Dreamers and siding with Trump in stealing military money to build the stupid wall,” Carrillo said. “It’s another classic ‘Cornyn Con,’ mixed in with mountains of hypocrisy, cowardice and lies.”

“The race for U.S. Senate in Texas has gotten a lot hotter than incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn ever imagined at the outset of this cycle,” Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld recently wrote. “Due to Cornyn and his Republican senate colleagues building Donald Trump into the monster that escaped from lab, Cornyn’s Democratic challenger MJ Hegar is breathing down his neck in her bid to unseat him. In fact, a Public Policy Polling survey released Friday put Hegar just a few points down. ‘MJ Hegar trails John Cornyn just 49-46, making up for the Republican lean of the state thanks to a 55-34 advantage with independent voters,’ writes PPP.” 

Can we win Texas? Absolutely. Get on the phones on Thursday with Turnout2020, and help Democratic voters in the Lone Star State request absentee ballots to flip the state blue. When you sign up, please remember to mark "Daily Kos" as the volunteer team that recruited you.

Donald Trump's parting gift to vulnerable Senate Republicans is that he appears to be a drag on them with both his most loyal supporters and the swing voters they need to win their reelection bids. 

In several of the most crucial Senate races, Trump is running ahead of his Senate GOP counterparts. In some cases, Trump might even win the state while the corresponding Senate Republican loses their race. In others, they both appear poised to lose the state but the Senate Republican could suffer a bigger defeat. 

Let's give Senate Republicans the boot! Give $2 right now for some epic satisfaction on election night.

What this suggests is that Trump's wild support among MAGA enthusiasts isn't making the 1-to-1 transfer to his Senate colleagues—meaning their blind loyalty to Trump hasn't paid the dividends they anticipated. At the same time, Senate Republicans' studied obsequiousness to Trump has hobbled their chances of winning enough moderate and independent voters to be assured they can prevail in their reelection bids.

In North Carolina, for instance, Trump and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis are both losing to their Democratic rivals according to polling composites, but Tillis is running behind Trump. According to Washington Post aggregates of the races, Trump has 45% support to Tillis' 41%.

In Georgia, the Post has Trump running slightly ahead of Joe Biden, 48% to 46%, but Sen. David Perdue only garners 46% support. It's worth noting the some aggregates show Biden just slightly ahead or virtually tied. But more crucially to Sen. Perdue, if he can't clear the 50% threshold in the state, he'll be forced into a two-way runoff with Democrat Jon Ossoff. 

South Carolina's Senate race is wild and GOP incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham is still favored to win reelection, though Democrat Jamie Harrison has made a real race of it. But in last week's New York Times/Siena poll, for instance, Trump enjoyed a "very favorable" rating among 79% of GOP voters while only 54% said the same of Graham. The survey also showed Trump up by 8 points, while Graham was winning by 6 points. 

In Iowa, polls show a dead heat between Trump and Biden in the presidential race but incumbent Senator Joni Ernst is fairing worse against her Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield. The Post aggregates have Trump winning 46% of voters to Ernst's 44% of voters.

It's kind of beautiful, when you think about it. After Senate Republicans built Trump into a monster by underwriting every abhorrent thing he’s done and then acquitting him of all wrongdoing to boot, they're getting punished for selling out America on both sides of the electoral equation. 

Humiliate Trump: Sign up with 2020 Victory to make phone calls to voters in battleground states to elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris & the whole Democratic ticket. All you need is a home computer, a quiet place at home to make calls & a burning desire to kick Donald Trump out of office.

From "I never liked Trump anyway" to "Democracy is tyranny," they're already previewing what they'll say if they lose.

Republicans are not permitted to acknowledge the sick and dying elephant in the room.

A bizarre graduation ceremony of the Egyptian Police Academy featuring parades of flexing shirtless men jumping through rings of fire has gone viral, catching the attention of George Takei, who tweeted, “For a terrifyingly homophobic and dangerously anti-LGBT government in Egypt, this screams pretty gay.” One clip has racked up more than 3.5 million views on Twitter.

For a terrifyingly homophobic and dangerously anti-LGBT government in Egypt, this screams pretty gay. https://t.co/At216ndhtF

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) October 18, 2020

The Sun reports: “More than 1,500 cadets pulled off an action-packed stunt with rings of fire and counter-terrorism tactics at the premises of the Police Academy in New Cairo on Friday. In the clip widely shared on social media, the shirtless officers have to leap through the fire rings and tow a SUV. The group also demonstrate their physical abilities, showing the superiors a series of stunts such as climbing the facade of a building, doing push-ups or breaking concrete blocks.”

“During the parade, the shredded officers showed off their six packs as they stand in rows on a moving trailer, The Sun added. “Some are seen demonstrating the force’s camouflage skills by hiding, very obviously, behind artificial bushes on the carnival floats. At the end of the ceremony, Egypt’s president congratulated the new officers and greeted their families, saying ‘they prepared their sons and devoted them to the country to defend us.'”

#مشاريع_مصر|
من حفل تخرج دفعة جديدة من أكاديمية الشرطة المصرية عام 2020
Graduation ceremony for the new police officers from the Egyptian Police Academy in 2020 pic.twitter.com/3oPkrsYRDA

— مشاريع مصر Egypt (@EgyProjects) October 15, 2020

But the situation in Egypt for LGBTQ people is dire.

Human Rights Watch reported: ‘A Cairo-based LGBT rights organization documented 92 arrests for alleged same-sex conduct in 2019 under Egypt’s “debauchery” law. According to the organization’s report, 69 percent of those arrested were “picked up randomly on the street,” indicating that Egyptian authorities are discriminating against people based on their gender expression. Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government, since 2013 authorities have waged a campaign of arrests and prosecution against hundreds of people for their perceived or actual sexual orientation and gender identity. In its 2019 report, the Alliance of Queer Egyptian Organizations (AQEO), comprised of three Egypt-based LGBT rights organizations, noted the government crackdown on LGBT people over the last four years, which includes violent assaults, torture (including forced anal exams), arbitrary detention, a denial of the rights to assembly and expression, and discrimination in accessing healthcare, education, employment, and housing.’

The post Shirtless Egyptian Police Academy Graduation Goes Viral: ‘For a Terrifyingly Homophobic Anti-LGBT Government … This Screams Pretty Gay’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

One of the great bogus refrains Second Amendment zealots repeat over and over again is that if the federal government or even states created a more robust background check and registry for gun owners, it would turn into an epic data privacy issue. Forget about the fact that the same people frequently say that voter ID laws are just like having a driver’s license, but hate when you mention that one needs to register with the DMV when becoming a car driver but not a gun owner. 

You might remember Cambridge Analytica from its work to destroy democracy. The political consulting firm was created by conservative billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. Along with Steve Bannon, the group was turned into an analyzing and disinformation planting machine that would help divide and conquer, one lie at a time. In order to do this Cambridge Analytica needed data, and they were able to legally and illegally get well over 50 million Facebook users’ personal information, which they weaponized as part of their campaign to help Donald Trump win the Electoral College in 2016. Many of Cambridge Analytica’s former staffers have silently and not so silently returned to the Trump campaign this time around.

One of those former scumbags is Matt Oczkowski, who headed Analytica’s product division before the company went bankrupt in 2018. Well, new documents from “a former Cambridge Analytica insider” show that among other things, Oczkowski and his crew were working on getting all kinds of data from the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation in order to build some predictive models of manipulation. Shock! And it looks like the NRA obliged. Double shock.

According to reports, Oczkowski and friends were able to get the data by way of business with the failing Second Amendment groups for their “Trigger The Vote” initiative. Get it? Trigger! Well, as documents show, the move was clearly a way to get around tax and campaign finance laws. In fact, Oczkowski writes “Each year, they run a large campaign aimed at ‘voter education.’ They call it voter education to avoid the corporate proxy tax by directly endorsing any candidates.”

NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter told The Washington Post that the gun lobby firm did indeed help with the “Trigger the Vote” scheme but wouldn’t go into details about what and how the membership data was used. What a con game these Second Amendment cabals are running on their members.

It’s not simply the NRA. Oczkowski explained the goals of the deal they were embarking on, and it included retailers and online gun dealers, using “fire arms manufacturing warranty cards.” The happy ending of this story is that Cambridge Analyctica went bankrupt. The part that good guys with guns might want to worry about is that before they did, Oczkowski and Cambridge Analyctica got the contract to get all that info. I wonder where it is now? I wonder who is using it? In order to hold the hand of Second Amendment patriots everywhere, it’s probably being used by the people that used it last time for the benefit of one specific group, and that group’s name rhymes with the Pepublican Rarty. 

If you enjoy this work, and if you can afford to do so, please consider helping me keep it sustainable in this no good, very bad year and beyond, by joining Sparky’s List!

Also: my new book, LIFE IN THE STUPIDVERSE, is now shipping!

“I’ve been a huge fan of Mr. Tomorrow’s work since I was a wee lad, and having meticulously studied his writing for many years, I’m afraid I’ve come up with a rather disturbing conclusion: some of our elected officials may not always have our best interests at heart.  I’m very sorry I had to be the one to tell you this.”

—Weird Al Yankovic

As a direct result of being a Trump-backing toady, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a hack during the best of times, is in serious danger of losing his seat to Democratic opponent MJ Hegar in the November elections. In an attempt to stanch the bleeding, Cornyn met with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's editorial board to (ahem) explain himself.

The results, which are being widely mocked around the internets for reasons that will soon become obvious, are an excellent preview of the defense every Republican will be offering up if Donald Trump loses his reelection bid. The less deft ones might want to go ahead and copy-and-paste Cornyn’s answers into their own notes now, rather than later; it may be, however, that the Republican Party will distribute them as talking points approximately five minutes after a definitive Trump loss. Or possibly crocheted on a pillow.

Sen. Cornyn wants the editorial board and/or Texas public to know that Actually, he has "disagreed" with Donald Blowhard Corruption Magnet on at least several important Republican things during these last four years. It is just that he did it in “private,” because reasons. The Star-Telegram reports that Cornyn told them he privately disagrees with Trump on "budget deficits and debt"—telegraphing an immediate Republican Party reversal-with-somersault switcharoo on whinging about those things endlessly, after allowing and encouraging the Trump team to blow enough holes in the federal budget to make it a colander. He privately disagreed on Trump's bizarrely premised and ridiculously executed trade wars, he wants you to know—trade wars that conflicted mightily with previous conservative ideology, only to be crumpled into a pile of YOLO when Trump did the opposite. Cornyn private disagreed with Trump on pilfering military money for his stupid border wall—it's not clear if this was before or after Cornyn publicly defended Trump doing exactly that and voted to let him do exactly that, so this one was a particularly private objection. He hid it so well he even hid it from himself!

"When I have had differences of opinion, which I have, (I) do that privately," Cornyn told the board, calling it a "much more effective" approach but offering no apparent evidence that it has been "effective" even once.

The short version, then, is this: On the verge of potentially losing his office, Sen. Cornyn would like you to know that despite defending Trump at every turn, including when Trump was impeached for the criminal abuse of his office, he secretly has opposed Trump at least several times and secretly has, you know, the right and non-humiliating opinions on things. Yes, all hail the noble and brave John Cornyn, who absolutely has disagreed with the authoritarian thunderdunce's incompetent moves and incomprehensible stances, but who nobly hid his disagreements rather than take action and risk being tweeted at.

Truly, a more noble figure has never graced public life. What a hero.

Oh—and if Donald wins, please forget he said any of these things. Parkour!

Sigh. Get used to these claims of secret Trump defiance, because if Trump causes Republicans nationwide to be routed from office you are going to be hearing a lot of them, and they're all going to match. Republicans are going to claim they were "against" Trump's incompetence and criminality the whole time, they just, um, did it when you weren't looking. It isn't that they were accessories to Trump's worst behavior, and actively celebrated many of his worst actions. It isn't that they actively worked to prevent criminal acts by Trump from being discovered, whether it be the constant grifting of government funds to line his pockets or an extortion scheme that the Republican Senate scurried to declare a non-issue. It isn't that they used their offices, as lawmakers, to support Trump's racist and white nationalist edicts, or used their committees to push obvious disinformation on his behalf.

Heavens, no. Actually, Cornyn and the others will insist, we were against those things all along. We were very unhappy about all of it. Secretly. Behind the scenes. Please give us new jobs, or hire us on as pundits, or whatever.

This new alleged rediscovery of morals and principles will be the subject of at least six (6) completely ridiculous Republican autobiographies released in the next six months, two dozen eerily similar Republican op-eds, and a full-on interpretive dance pageant held at Republican National Committee headquarters. You can count on it.

If it all sounds like bullshit, congratulations: Your skull has not yet been completely hollowed out by the last four years of insanity. Of course it's bullshit. As senator, John Cornyn allied himself with nearly all of Trump's moves, including the possibly-criminal ones, much less the only stupid ones. There's no doubt he had private concerns about doing some of them, but that didn't stop him. He chose the most craven approach each time, on every topic, and is slinking back to his voters with the most craven approach now, signaling that his principles are now whatever they need to be in this moment, and will be shifting yet again if the moment changes. Whatever you want, voters. Just tell him the tune and he’ll dance to it.

Hacks and scoundrels, the lot of them. There’s not enough integrity left in the Republican Party to fill a mason jar. If Cornyn saves his seat—and it's going to be close, but he's still a few points ahead—he will switch messages all over again, either surgically attaching himself to Trump or re-re-inventing himself with whatever newly discovered principle each week and month temporarily requires. The Mitch McConnell-led Senate has combined the conspiracy theorizing of House Republicans with a relentless drive to maintain conservative power using every available rule and, when those are not sufficient, inventing new ones; holding power is the only ideology remaining in a party that has gleefully shed all of the others.

Hacks. Just hacks, from top to bottom. They don't even have the decency left to feel shame, when they pull this "well secretly I was actually against those controversial things I supported" nonsense.

Politico’s Ally Mutnick reported on Thursday evening that the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund has cut $450,000 from its planned ad buy in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District for Oct. 14 to Oct. 20 in what she called “a sign of no confidence in GOP nominee Dale Crafts.”

Unfortunately for Crafts, the CLF isn’t alone in making this determination about his prospects for unseating freshman Democratic Rep. Jared Golden. The DCCC scaled back its ad reservation in late September, and Mutnick adds that the NRCC is “already off air.” Every poll that’s been released has also shown a clear lead for Golden in this northern Maine seat, which Donald Trump carried 51-41 four years ago.

We've added this new information about the CLF and NRCC spending, or lack thereof, to our Daily Kos Elections 2020 House race triage tracker, which we'll be continuously updating through Election Day.

Want more great elections coverage like this? Sign up for our free daily newsletter, the Morning Digest.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer introduces Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at Beech Woods Recreation Center October 16, 2020, in Southfield, Michigan. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Whitmer accused Trump of inciting domestic terrorism on Sunday.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has called on President Donald Trump to stop “inspiring and incentivizing and inciting” domestic terrorism against her, in a plea that came just 10 days after the FBI revealed a right-wing plot to abduct her.

Her statement, made Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, comes after Trump told supporters at a Saturday rally in Muskegon, Michigan, to “be careful of” the governor and their state’s attorney general, and after he criticized Whitmer’s attempts to stem the rising number of Covid-19 cases in Michigan. Each time the president attacked the governor, his supporters took up a “lock her up” chant.

It’s not a new theme for Trump: He’s long made a point of going after Whitmer, both before and after the FBI arrested six men for planning to kidnap and potentially murder her.

In March, he told Vice President Mike Pence, head of the White House coronavirus task force, not to call “the woman in Michigan” because Whitmer criticized his response to the pandemic.

Immediately after the kidnapping plot was revealed in early October, Trump sent three tweets about Whitmer, briefly noting that he condemns “ANY extreme violence,” while also accusing her of doing “a terrible job” as governor and criticizing her for not thanking him personally for the FBI’s role in stopping a domestic terrorism scheme.

Trump has also attacked Whitmer using nearly the same rhetoric as the members of the far-right militia — who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen — who were arrested.

“[Whitmer] wants to be a dictator in Michigan,” Trump told a Fox Business host Friday, “and they can’t stand her.”

According to an affidavit by FBI agent Richard Trask, the Michigan conspirators repeatedly referred to Whitmer as a “tyrant” and said she had “no checks and balances at all.”

Whitmer isn’t the only elected official who has become the target of would-be right-wing violence over Covid-19 restrictions — which are well-supported by science. In Wichita, Kansas, on Friday, a man was arrested for plotting to kidnap and kill Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple because of a mask mandate, according to a report by the Wichita Eagle.

And the same group that planned violence against Whitmer had also contemplated kidnapping Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.

Northam and Whitmer both run states Trump tweeted his supporters should “LIBERATE” — along with Minnesota — in April.

And as as Vox’s Fabiola Cineas has documented, Trump’s rhetoric against Whitmer — and his “LIBERATE” tweets — are not one-off events. He has a long history of “encouraging hate groups and political violence.”

Trump has seemed especially quick to attack female opponents

Trump, needless to say, isn’t selective about who he attacks. At the slightest criticism, he’s just as likely to turn his fire on a member of his own party — like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse — as he is to go after anyone else.

And Whitmer has criticized him: In March, she said that “we, as a nation, were not as prepared as we should have been” for the coronavirus pandemic, and Sunday on Meet the Press, said the “Trump virus response is the worst in the globe.”

But while Whitmer isn’t alone in pointing out the shortcomings of the federal Covid-19 response — even Gov. Larry Hogan, the Republican leader of Maryland, has also done so, for instance — she has become the unique target of a sustained campaign of vitriol by the president.

There’s a straightforward explanation for that. As Vox’s Anna North explains,

Whitmer isn’t just a Democrat or a governor telling people what to do — she’s also a woman telling people what to do. That’s never been particularly popular with a certain subset of Americans, and it’s especially unpopular now that Trump and others have introduced a gendered element into the politics of Covid-19 response, peddling the idea that it’s manly to ignore the risk of the virus.

Indeed, it’s no accident that Whitmer is being called a tyrant and a bitch. The attacks on her feed into age-old stereotypes about women in power — stereotypes that are especially dangerous now as they undermine some of the very leaders who are trying to stop the spread of Covid-19 and keep Americans safe.

Ultimately, Trump’s attacks on Whitmer are just part of a history of misogyny on the part of the president. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was also the target of “lock her up” chants. Just this month, Trump attacked Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “monster.” And while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is characterized as “cryin’” in Trump’s tweets, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is almost invariably labeled “Crazy Nancy” when Trump tweets about her.

According to Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive who oversaw the construction of Trump Tower, Trump’s sexism is by no means new. But, she reportedly writes in an upcoming book, “his regard for himself had increased exponentially” over time, “as had his contempt for women.” And Trump’s treatment of Whitmer would appear to be a clear example of that.

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"Fitness influencer Dmitriy Stuzhuk has passed away at the age of 33 after suffering from complications related to COVID-19," reports E! Online. The Daily Dot points out that Stuzhuk believed COVID-19 "didn't exist" — until he caught it himself after travelling in Turkey: Stuzhuk, who boasted more than 1 million followers on Instagram, tested positive after returning home and immediately went to the hospital. In his final post on Instagram, Stuzhuk, who said that the hospital was "completely filled with people," admitted that he was wrong about the disease and urged his followers to stay vigilant. "I want to share how I got sick and to strongly warn everyone," he wrote. "I was one who thought that Covid does not exist... Until I got sick..." Although Stuzhuk was eventually discharged from the hospital after being treated with oxygen, he was rushed back just hours later after his situation began to worsen...Stuzhuk's ex-wife Sofia stated on Instagram that her former husband began having heart-complications linked to "problems with his cardiovascular system..." The couple had three children together, the youngest of whom was just 9 months old. "Only warm memories remain, three beautiful kids and valuable experience," Sofia said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[The Judicial Conference is recommending additional judges for what is already the largest ]

With 29 judges in active service, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is already the nations largest federal appellate court. The court is so large that it does not sit as a full court when sitting en banc. Instead, en banc panels consist of the Chief Judge and ten other judges selected at random.

The Judicial Conference of the United States is recommending the addition of five additional seats to the Ninth Circuit, in addition to 73 district court judgeships around the country (eight of which are temporary judgeships that would be made permanent). These recommendations are based upon the Judicial Conference's assessment of court caseloads and administrative needs, and were the subject of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this year.

The Conference is likely correct that the Ninth Circuit needs more judges to handle the volume of cases within the circuit. The same goes for their district court recommendations. The last time Congress significantly expanded the federal courts was in 1990, and court caseloads have increased substantially since then, particularly in federal district courts. Expanding lower courts to handle the nation's legal needs is overdue.

While I accept the Judicial Conference's claim that the nation needs more federal judges, I confess some reluctance to make the Ninth Circuit any larger. It is already an unwieldy court, far larger than any other circuit. While the Judicial Conference is recommending that the Ninth Circuit have over thirty judges, no other circuit court even has twenty—and no other circuit has adopted the Ninth Circuit's non-banc en banc process.

When Congress gets around to responding to the Judicial Conference's request, I hope it also gives consideration to splitting the Ninth Circuit into two, more normal-sized courts. In the past, such proposals have foundered on political concerns, such as that California's influence would overwhelm that of any other states in a newly constituted court. The alternatives of spitting California between two circuits or having a California-only circuit are also less-then desirable. Perhaps so, but it seems to me that a 30-plus judge circuit court is worse. Creating two circuit courts—a California-only court and another consisting of the remainder of the current Ninth—with 18 judges each, would satisfy the need for more judges and cut the current Ninth down to size.

The Trump administration is a disaster. It was a garbage fire when it began, but that ongoing fire, stoked by the entire Republican Party, has led to an increase in authoritarian use of law enforcement and ICE forces to dehumanize people all across our country. On top of all of that, the bad economic policies and general culture of avarice and self-serving incompetence promoted by Trump and the Republican Party have led us to the precipice of an economic depression, and a public health crisis the likes of which has not been seen in generations has pushed that depression into the territory of collapse.

With just over two weeks until Election Day, Trump’s surrogates—the ones not sick with COVID-19 or hiding out to pretend they aren’t still milking the poisonous Trump cow—have taken to the airwaves to pretend everything is going according to plan. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was on Meet the Press Sunday, to implore Americans in his most imploring-sounding voice, to wear masks and follow the basic general protections against spreading the COVID-19 virus that experts have been promoting since the beginning of this pandemic. Azar even scripted his statement as a plea to Chuck Todd’s “viewers.” This, obviously, surprised even Meet The Press host Chuck Todd, since Donald Trump and his administration have done the opposite now for, oh, about ... seven months. 

Secretary Azar’s message to Chuck Todd’s viewers was specifically about large “indoor gatherings.” This is relevant due to upcoming Halloween festivities and Thanksgiving celebrations. Todd remarked that Azar’s statement was strange considering that just last week, Azar attended an indoor rally with President Trump—the same President Trump that still may very well be COVID-19 positive. Azar said that everyone at the indoor rally was socially distanced—sort of—and were all offered masks. Of course, this means nothing if you don’t wear said mask. Todd pointed out that the message being sent doesn’t seem consistent, as states like Wisconsin see surges in COVID-19 cases, while Donald Trump flies into those areas to promote big superspreader events.

It is here that Azar attempts to promote misinformation that does two things: It attempts at justifying the Trump administration’s current anti-public health farewell tour, while also absolving the administration’s criminally negligent handling of a pandemic that has claimed almost a quarter of a million American lives. Azar says that lots of countries in lockdown are having big surges. The implication here is that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

This isn’t true. The fact of the matter is that the United States, for the first time in years, is actually No. 1 in the world in something: death rates due to COVID-19 and death rates in general during the pandemic. We are also a leader in the world in cases per 100,000 and deaths per 100,000. I guess Azar is talking about how places like Aruba and Bahrain have a worse case rate? Todd asks why it’s been so “difficult for the president” to promote a public health message that would actually save thousands, if not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives.

ALEX AZAR: I think it's a difficult message for all western democracies. We're seeing that in Europe. The American people have given so much. People of Europe have given so much, Chuck. They've been locked down, isolated. But they’re tired. But the point is, we're so close. Hang in there with us. We're so close ...

Azar has been a Trump hack throughout this process and can be justifiably blamed for much of the misinformation and confusion among certain sections of the American public in regard to COVID-19. He has attacked Americans and frontline responders instead of the virus. If we lived in a just universe, Alex Azar would soon find himself doing some prison time along with the hundreds of Republican operatives and scam artists who have brought us to where we are now.

As readers of Daily Kos are certainly familiar with, Donald Trump and his administration are experts at dodging (or at least, trying to dodge) reasonable, important questions from journalists. Whether it’s about the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s tax records, denouncing white supremacy, or taking accountability for hateful rhetoric, we have countless examples of Trump and his lackeys sidestepping questions from media during interviews. If you’ve ever watched a video and thought, Why in the world can’t this be challenged, right now, on-air?, you’re probably going to enjoy this clip of New Zealand journalist Tova O’Brien, an anchor on Newshub New Zealand. One particular gem? “I don’t want to hear any of that rubbish.” Maybe O’Brien should moderate our presidential debates?

Here is the four-minute clip that is unsurprisingly going viral even among Americans on Twitter, as well as some context on New Zealand’s recent election.

“You want to have another crack at answering that?” O’Brien, political news editor at Newshub, says when Jami-Lee Ross, Advance NZ co-leader, sidesteps her opening question. She then describes him as being part of a political movement involved in “peddling misinformation during the election campaign.”

Some quick background on politics in New Zealand: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern just had a major victory in the country’s election, earning her a second term. Advance NZ, which, according to Ross, got less than 1% of the vote, has reportedly made incorrect claims about a vaccine, including suggesting that the government pushed a law to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory in the country. Just before the election, Facebook removed two posts from the party’s Facebook page, as reported by Indy 100.

When they get to COVID-19 and related misinformation in the interview, O’Brien says, “You knew exactly what you were doing. You were whipping up fear and hysteria among vulnerable communities.”

“Not at all,” he replied. He acknowledged COVID-19 as a real virus and appeared to begin to talk about fatality rates of COVID-19 compared to that of other viruses, like the seasonal flu, and O’Brien said she was going to stop him right there. 

“I don’t want to hear any of that rubbish,” she said. “If you’re going to come on the show and say things which are factually incorrect, I can’t do that.”

It’s also worth noting that while some Twitter users and commenters characterized this interview as hostile, rude, and aggressive, if a man was doing the interview, it may very well be described as firm, prepared, and no-nonsense. Some comments also describe the dialogue as involving yelling and fighting, but both parties appear calm and professional, even while disagreeing.

This is far from the first time we’ve talked about the importance of media members speaking plainly and calling out injustices. A new working paper found a significant relationship between Trump’s claims about mail-in voting and fraud, for example, and the concerning number of people worked up about the subject (which, in reality, is a hysterical obsession of Trump’s) because of its major media coverage. We’ve heard anchors call out the Trump administration for reportedly muzzling members of the coronavirus task force, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, when it comes to media interviews. On that day, instead of Fauci, we got to hear from Eric Trump, who took the time to rant about antifa instead of the literal global pandemic still raging in our nation.

Of course, people being interviewed also have an opportunity to flip the script. You might remember tennis superstar Naomi Osaka using her international platform to raise awareness for Black Lives Matter and racial injustice by wearing face masks with the names of Black Americans killed by police, including Breonna Taylor and Elijah McCain. When a journalist asked her what message she hoped to send with her masks, she spun the question on him, saying “Well, ‘What was the message you got?’... is more the question. I feel like the point is to make people start talking.”

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The pejorative phrase “court packing” flows from a couple of questionable premises. First, that there is some morally or legally correct limit on the number of judges that should sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and second that the use of political power to shift the balance of the court is unseemly. Neither is accurate, since it’s completely within the legitimate power of Congress to pass a law changing the size of the Supreme Court, or any other federal court. In reality, what the outcry against court packing reveals is a preference for the status quo, which not coincidentally entrenches white male minority rule. While the latest round in the court-packing fight has been touched off by the nomination of a white woman to the Supreme Court, make no mistake: From top to bottom, the federal courts have already been packed—with white men. Given how little the courts reflect the increasingly diverse American population, it’s not changing the size of a single court that will bring about a crisis of legitimacy. The crisis is already here.

White men comprise just 30% of the U.S. population but have been overrepresented in the federal courts since the creation of the judiciary. The Supreme Court is the most visible example—through its centuries-long history, all but six of the 114 justices to sit on the court have been white men. Today, the court continues to over-index on white guys, with five out of eight justices being from that demographic. But the representational problem extends to every level of the federal judiciary. After centuries of racial and gender homogeneity, the judiciary took its most significant strides toward diversification under President Barack Obama, who appointed larger proportions of female and BIPOC judges than any president in history.

But Obama’s approach was an anomaly in presidential history—one that the Trump administration has eagerly worked to neutralize. Guided by Sen. Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society, Trump has filled 200 judicial vacancies with 85% white and 76% male appointees. Today, nearly 60% of all sitting federal judges are white men. As a result, not only have the past and present Supreme Court been packed with white men, so too has the pipeline for future justices from the Courts of Appeals. Of all the justices appointed in the last 50 years from any demographic, all but four boasted service on one of the lower federal courts, and no judge of color has ever been appointed to the Supreme Court without having first served on a U.S. Court of Appeals. So even if a president comes along who’s more inclined to appoint justices that better reflect the American population, the overwhelming whiteness of today’s judiciary means a smaller pool of potential justices of color who’d be considered “qualified” well into the future.  

Absent some kind of intervention, these demographic realities mean the Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary are and will continue to be controlled by white men whose decisions commonly ratify the ability of other white men to impose their will on the rest of us. In the hands of the current white supremacist presidential administration and Congress—another overwhelmingly white and politically unrepresentative body—that kind of judiciary is a convenient tool for cementing the white conservative policy agenda. Just this week, the Supreme Court helpfully cut off the census count early, kneecapping efforts to accurately count nonwhite and hard to reach populations, and a Court of Appeals blessed voter suppression tactics in Texas that will disproportionately affect people of color. But the unrepresentative nature of the federal courts isn’t a new problem.

Although courts are often held up as the last line of defense for the rights of people who aren’t white cis men—Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ folks—the reality has always been somewhat more complicated. While some of the most cherished Supreme Court decisions have shielded marginalized communities from having our rights subject to the whims of powerful white men—Brown v. Board of Education, Obergfell v. Hodges, and Roe v. Wade—more often, the court has handed down decisions that enact significant harm on everyone else: Korematsu v. United States, which permitted the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act; U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, which greenlighted the construction of an oil pipeline beneath part of the Appalachian Trail over the protests of the Indigenous, Latino, and Black communities who call the area home; and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, torpedoing birth control access.

Ultimately the courts are and always have been just as stark an example of minority rule as the Senate, with a composition that skews power toward whiter and less populous states. The federal courts are just as political—the very fact that judges and justices are nominated and then confirmed by the two more nakedly political branches of the U.S. government renders any argument for the courts as neutral bodies absurd on its face. Given that reality, it’s just as illegitimate and undemocratic for the federal judiciary to be demographically captured by white men as it is for any other government body. For an institution that claims to serve and do justice on behalf of the people, expecting it to reflect the composition of those people is the bare minimum. So, if expanding the size of the federal judiciary—from the Supreme Court on down—is what it takes to create a reflective court system, then let’s get packing.

Ashton Lattimore is the editor-in-chief of Prism. Follow her on Twitter @ashtonlattimore.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places and issues currently underreported by our national media. Through our original reporting, analysis, and commentary, we challenge dominant, toxic narratives perpetuated by the mainstream press and work to build a full and accurate record of what’s happening in our democracy. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) listens during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, October 15, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Anna Moneymaker/Pool/Getty Images

Republicans are still favored in Alaska and South Carolina. But overall, Democratic hopes of a Senate majority are looking up.

A pair of new Senate polls from the New York Times and Siena College this week show Democrats pressing for an advantage in two traditionally conservative states — Alaska and South Carolina — as November 3 closes in.

In Alaska, the Times/Siena poll found independent Senate candidate Al Gross — who is running as the Democratic nominee — trailing incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by about 8 percentage points, with third-party candidate John Howe’s support at 10 percent.

And in South Carolina, the Siena pollsters found that Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham continues to face a far closer race than expected, with Democrat Jaime Harrison just 6 percentage points behind his rival and riding a wave of momentum. In 2014, by comparison, Graham won reelection by more than 15 percentage points.

Though Republican incumbents are still the favorites to win in Alaska and South Carolina, challengers Gross and Harrison have seen major influxes of campaign cash in recent weeks — Harrison set an all-time record by raising $57 million in a single quarter. Data for Progress’s Sean McElwee recently told Vox’s Matthew Yglesias that it isn’t too late for campaigns to use large cash injections — meaning these large fundraising hauls could affect the final outcome of each race. And other recent polls show much tighter races in both states.

One Alaska poll released this week, from Harstad Strategic Research, found Gross leading Sullivan by 1 percentage point, though that’s well within the 4 percentage point margin of error. A survey taken slightly before Harstad’s, Alaska Survey Research’s September 25 to October 4 poll, found Sullivan ahead by 4 percentage points.

This close polling is reflected in experts’ predictions of the outcome in the state: On Tuesday, Cook Political Report shifted its Alaska Senate race outlook from Likely R to Lean R.

And J. Miles Coleman, associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told Vox’s Ella Nilsen in August, “I wouldn’t sleep on the Senate race.”

Cook also now rates South Carolina as an outright toss up, and Data for Progress found Harrison with a 2 percentage point edge over Graham in early October — again within the poll’s 3.5 percent margin of error. A Quinnipiac University poll taken in late September found Harrison and Graham tied, while a CBS News poll taken in the same period found Graham to have a 1 percentage point lead.

That either Democratic candidate is even remotely close to their Republican rival with just 17 days until the election is striking. The results of both elections won’t necessarily shake out the way polling suggests, but the fact Alaska and South Carolina are in play for Democrats underscores just how broad the Democratic path to a potential Senate majority has grown.

Democratic chances of a Senate majority are looking up

To gain the majority outright, Democrats need to pick up four seats in a chamber currently controlled by the GOP, 53 seats to 47 (including independent Sens. Bernie Sanders and Angus King, who caucus with the Democrats).

The work of pollsters and forecasters suggest a Democratic majority in 2021 is looking like an increasingly realistic outcome: According to FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast, Democrats are favored outright in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina against Republican incumbents; Montana and Kansas — in addition to Alaska and South Carolina — could be in play as well.

In total, Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor says that Democrats could pick up as many as seven seats if everything breaks their way on November 3.

In some states, this optimism is being reflected in spending.

In Colorado, for example, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is scaling back its investment in incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner. The group has spent less than $150,000 in the state through the first half of October, according to the Denver Post, compared to millions spent in Iowa, Montana, and elsewhere.

And one Democratic PAC is also pulling its investment in Colorado — for the opposite reason. That group, Senate Majority PAC, is reportedly so confident in Democratic Senate nominee John Hickenlooper, who is leading by a comfortable margin stretching into the double digits, it is moving funding it allocated for the state to other races.

There are some areas of concern for Democrats, however. In Alabama, where Democratic Sen. Doug Jones won an improbable victory against Republican Roy Moore in 2018, Republicans are favored to unseat the Democratic incumbent. And the race in Michigan, where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is up for reelection, is also shaping up to be competitive.

Joe Biden’s agenda might rest on a Democratic Senate majority

Though unseating President Donald Trump is Democrats’ top priority, control of the Senate could prove nearly as important heading into 2020.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell — who is expected to win reelection in November — prizes his title as “Grim Reaper” of the US Senate. And if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden takes office in January with McConnell still majority leader, marquee Democratic priorities — like health care, climate change, and voting rights — are likely dead on arrival.

The good news for Democrats is that Gross and Harrison aren’t the only Democratic candidates swimming in money. From July 1 through the end of September, the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue processed $1.5 billion in donations, ensuring the party’s slate of candidates will be very well funded heading into the last three weeks of the race.

These current polling and fundraising successes have some Republicans sounding the alarm: Republican pollster David Flaherty told the Denver Post this week that “the train wreck and implosion of the president will bring a historic number of other Republican candidates down, and if you don’t believe that then you have your head in the sand.” And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz raised the specter of “a bloodbath of Watergate proportions” for his party on CNBC last Friday.

As always, polls can be ephemeral — they’re a snapshot in time, not a forecast of how the race will shake out on Election Day. Things can change, and suddenly. But there’s not much time left in the race, and the current state of affairs has many Democrats feeling confident about their chances at the Senate majority.

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The Motley Fool writes: AMD held just under 18% of the CPU market at the end of 2016 before Ryzen arrived. The latest third-party estimates suggest that the chipmaker now controls close to 37% of the market. Other reliable estimates from the likes of video gaming platform Steam also suggest that AMD has been consistently chipping away at Intel's CPU dominance. And AMD isn't done hammering Intel in CPUs just yet — especially since the arrival of its latest Ryzen 5000 CPUs... According to AMD's own claims, a high-end Ryzen 5000 processor can deliver a 26% jump in gaming performance over the previous-generation chip. AMD also claims that the chip is 7% faster in gaming performance than the competing Intel chip... Rumors suggest that Intel may not launch its 12th-generation 10nm Alder Lake processors until the second half of 2021 to compete with AMD's 7nm process. So AMD is likely to continue enjoying a technology lead over Intel, especially considering that it could make the move to a 5nm manufacturing process with the Zen 4 microarchitecture by the end of 2021, according to rumors. As such, don't be surprised to see AMD continuing to eat Intel's market share, and remaining a top growth stock in the future thanks to a combination of improved CPU sales and stronger pricing power.

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Debates haven't gone so well for some of the Republican senators facing tough challenges this year—see Ernst, Joni—and one Republican who isn’t supposed to have a hard time has decided not to give herself the chance to screw up. Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith is refusing to debate Democrat Mike Espy.

She’s just flatly blowing it off, saying, “To be honest with you, the debate about debates, that is something that losing candidates and reporters care about.” As Espy pointed out in response, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently debated Amy McGrath. Joni Ernst may regret it, but she did debate Theresa Greenfield. Hyde-Smith’s contempt for the very idea of letting voters see her head-to-head with her challenger is not universal even among Republicans.

It’s time to fight to the very end. Can you give $3 to each Daily Kos-endorsed Senate candidate for the final push to November 3?

Espy’s recent fundraising has been strong, and at least one poll has showed a close race—though with a lot of undecided voters who are likely to break for Hyde-Smith, because Mississippi. He remains an extremely long shot, but he’s not a joke of a candidate by any stretch. 

Hyde-Smith’s other big excuse for not debating is that she and Espy debated in 2018, and apparently there’s nothing new to say. As if the world has not changed one little bit since 2018.

Hyde-Smith will probably win, because she’s a Republican in Mississippi. But she sure doesn’t look like someone who is confidently and comfortably cruising to the finish line.

We are facing a national shortage of poll workers because many senior citizens, who usually make up the majority of poll workers, are staying home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Help prevent long lines at the polls, or even the closure of polling sites, by signing up to become a poll worker in your area with Power the Polls.

The Google Cloud team revealed today a previously undisclosed DDoS attack that targeted Google service back in September 2017 and which clocked at 2.54 Tbps, making it the largest DDoS attack recorded to date. From a report: In a separate report published at the same time, the Google Threat Threat Analysis Group (TAG), the Google security team that analyzes high-end threat groups, said the attack was carried out by a state-sponsored threat actor. TAG researchers said the attack came from China, having originated from within the network of four Chinese internet service providers (ASNs 4134, 4837, 58453, and 9394). Damian Menscher, a Security Reliability Engineer for Google Cloud, said the 2.54 Tbps peak was "the culmination of a six-month campaign" that utilized multiple methods of attacks to hammer Google's server infrastructure.

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