Democrats are amassing an enormous lead in early voting, alarming Republicans who worry they’ll need to orchestrate a huge Election Day turnout during a deadly coronavirus outbreak to answer the surge.
The Democratic dominance spreads across an array of battleground states, according to absentee ballot request data compiled by state election authorities and analyzed by Democratic and Republican data experts. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Democrats have a roughly 3-to-1 advantage over Republicans in absentee ballot requests. In Florida — a must-win for President Donald Trump — the Democratic lead stands at more than 700,000 ballot requests, while the party also leads in New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa.
Even more concerning for Republicans, Democrats who didn't vote in 2016 are requesting 2020 ballots at higher rates than their GOP counterparts. The most striking example is Pennsylvania, where nearly 175,000 Democrats who sat out the last race have requested ballots, more than double the number of Republicans, according to an analysis of voter rolls by the Democratic firm TargetSmart.
Though the figures are preliminary, they provide a window into Democratic enthusiasm ahead of the election and offer a warning for Republicans. While Democrats stockpile votes and bring in new supporters, Trump’s campaign is relying on a smooth Election Day turnout operation at a time when it’s confronting an out-of-control pandemic and a mounting cash crunch.
“A ballot in is a ballot in, and no late-campaign message or event takes it out of the count,” said Chris Wilson, a GOP pollster who specializes in data and analytics. “Bottom line is that means that Biden is banking a lead in the mail and more of the risk of something going wrong late is born by Republicans because our voters haven't voted yet.”
Republicans acknowledge Democrats have established a lead, though some stressed it was early and compared it to a basketball team winning the opening tipoff. Trump aides argue that the Democratic advantage will make little difference in the end, saying the opposing party is merely front-loading voters who otherwise would have voted on Nov. 3.
They also note that while Trump has repeatedly bashed mail-in voting — virtually ensuring that most of his supporters cast ballots in-person on Election Day — Democrats are placing a heavy emphasis on it. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last month showed that nearly half of Biden’s supporters planned to vote by mail, compared with just about one-tenth of Trump supporters.
The Trump team points to special congressional elections earlier this year in red-tinted New York and Wisconsin districts where Republicans trailed in absentee voting but ended up with a substantial advantage among voters who cast ballots on Election Day, giving them wins in both contests.
“The majority of our voters prefer to vote in-person. So, we expect to be well behind on absentee requests as Democrats have made it their mission to push for an all-mail election that brings fraud and chaos into the system. You’ll see Democrats predominantly vote by mail, and our voters will come out in droves to vote in-person,” said Mike Reed, a Republican National Committee spokesperson.
But the data also shows that Democrats are attracting new supporters in small but potentially significant numbers in states they narrowly lost in 2016.
In Pennsylvania, which Trump won by just 44,000 votes four years ago, Democrats have built a lead of nearly 100,000 ballot requests from voters who didn’t participate in the 2016 election but are preparing to vote by mail this year, according to TargetSmart’s figures. In Michigan, where Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes (and where voters do not register by party), the firm’s model shows that Democratic-aligned voters have a nearly 20,000-person advantage among non-2016 voters signing up to receive ballots. In Wisconsin, which Trump won by 22,000 votes, Democratic-leaning voters who skipped 2016 have made nearly 10,000 more requests for this election than their GOP counterparts.
Republicans are also encouraging supporters to vote absentee. Through telephone calls, digital advertising and mailers, they have prodded Trump backers to vote early or by mail. The pro-Trump outside group America First Action, meanwhile, has been following up with voters to ensure they are turning in their ballots.
Yet Trump — much to the frustration of senior Republicans — has undermined those efforts with repeated attacks on mail-in voting. The president has used his recent public appearances and his Twitter feed to savage voting by mail as a process that can’t be trusted.
“It's a case of what Trump actually says mattering a lot more than what his campaign does. The campaign is working hard to get absentees requested and, soon, returned; but Trump bashing mail voting repeatedly makes strong Republicans much less likely to do it,” Wilson, the GOP pollster, said.
Democrats, who were widely criticized for running a lackluster turnout operation four years ago, say they are capitalizing on a wave of anti-Trump energy to bank ballots. The party used its convention to press early voting, with prominent figures like former first lady Michelle Obama imploring people to cast ballots as soon as possible.
They point to Florida as a major bright spot. Democrats lead Republicans in vote-by-mail requests 2.1 million to 1.4 million, according to a GOP consultant who is tracking the figures. At this same point in 2016, Democrats trailed Republicans in requests.
“While Trump is busy kneecapping Republican efforts to sign up his supporters to vote by mail with debunked claims about absentee voting, Democrats have a massive grassroots army focused on turning out voters early and on Election Day, and we're already seeing strong results and real energy — including among first-time voters," said Michael Gwin, a Biden campaign spokesperson.
There have been a few rays of hope for Republicans, however. In Georgia, a competitive state with two key Senate races, the party has a roughly 55,000-vote edge over Democrats.
But Republicans acknowledge they will be largely leaning on a well-organized Election Day turnout program they’ve spent years developing — one that is widely seen as superior to the one Democrats have built.
“We expect that,” said Reed, the RNC spokesperson, “to be a huge difference-maker.”
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf speaks during a press conference on July 21, 2020, in Washington, DC. His alleged misdeeds are cited in whistleblower Brian Murphy’s complaint. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Some of it doesn’t quite add up, and other parts show the Department of Homeland Security is rotting from the top.
Top Trump administration officials at the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly ordered subordinates to suppress or change US intelligence reports on critical national security issues — including election interference by Russia — so they wouldn’t contradict the president or make him look bad.
That’s according to an explosive new whistleblower complaint released by the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday afternoon. The complaint was filed by Brian Murphy, who until recently headed intelligence and analysis at DHS.
In the 24-page report and a seven-page supplement, Murphy alleges four main incidents of wrongdoing by his superiors at the agency:
That then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen repeatedly, and perhaps knowingly, exaggerated the number of suspected terrorists crossing the southern border into the US in official documents and sessions with lawmakers — despite having been briefed numerous times by Murphy that the numbers she was citing were not accurate.
That DHS acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told Murphy to alter an intelligence report detailing the high levels of corruption, violence, and economic problems in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to make those countries look like safe destinations for migrants, a judgment that would aid Trump’s restrictive asylum policy.
That DHS acting Secretary Chad Wolf, at the request of White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, ordered Murphy to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.”
That Cuccinelli and Wolf at different times instructed Murphy to modify domestic terrorism threat assessments to downplay the threat from white supremacists and add information on the prominence of violent left-wing groups like antifa “to ensure [the assessments] matched up with the public comments by President Trump.”
A word of caution: Multiple people familiar with Murphy’s time at DHS told me he’d often engaged in the same kind of behavior he now accuses his superiors of doing, namely altering assessments to fit the administration’s policies. In addition, news reports in late July revealed that Murphy’s office had been compiling “intelligence reports” on journalists and protesters in Portland, Oregon.
Murphy fiercely denies those allegations, but shortly after the reports were published, he was demoted from his position and reassigned to an administrative support role. Some people I spoke to said Murphy’s whistleblower report is “definitely” meant as retaliation against his superiors for his demotion.
His credibility, then, is somewhat suspect.
However, the complaint notes Murphy had reported these incidents to his immediate supervisor, others in his chain of command, and DHS’s inspector general between March 2018 and August 2020 — well before his demotion.
And two sources I spoke to confirmed one of the claims in Murphy’s complaint: that National Security Adviser O’Brien directed DHS to minimize intelligence reports on Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election and instead focus on interference by China and Iran.
“That’s even been the instructions within the NSC,” a senior White House official told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “POTUS does not want to hear anything negative about Russia,” the official added, using an acronym for the president of the United States. A second source familiar with O’Brien’s directive also confirmed this. The White House denies this.
It’s worth it, then, to go through exactly what Murphy claims happened at DHS, why it’s so troubling, and what it tells us about intelligence and national security in the Trump era.
Overall, it’s a disturbing picture.
Claim 1: Former DHS Secretary Nielsen repeatedly misled Congress about the threat of terrorists entering the US through the southern border
Murphy says that from October 2018 to March 2019, he, Nielsen, and other top DHS officials discussed how best to present their argument to Congress for building a wall on the southern border with Mexico. Such an expansive wall, of course, was Trump’s most high-profile campaign promise, in which he insisted only a structure that massive could curb illegal immigration and stop violent criminals and terrorists from entering the United States.
Their discussions centered on “known or suspected terrorists” (KSTs) — individuals believed to be terrorists or to have ties to known terrorists — and Murphy was charged with providing to Nielsen analysis on their threat. That’s different from “special interest aliens,” a term used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to identify people who come from countries with a big terrorist presence but who aren’t specifically linked to terrorism themselves. (We’ll get back to that in a moment.)
Around October 29, a top official told Murphy “to ensure the intelligence assessments he produced for Secretary Nielsen’s review supported the policy argument that large numbers of KSTs were entering the United States through the southwest border.”
Here’s where it gets a little complicated. In the original complaint, Murphy made the eye-popping charge that Nielsen had perjured herself in front of Congress. He said the then- secretary testified to a House committee that, in 2017, DHS had prevented 3,755 KSTs from traveling to or entering the US, even though the real number was no more than three.
“He has a good faith belief that the testimony Secretary Nielsen subsequently provided on December 20, 2018, regarding KSTs constituted a knowing and deliberate submission of false material information,” the complaint reads. He makes the same charge about a March 6, 2019, hearing — that she repeated the figure and misled lawmakers once more.
For Murphy, Nielsen’s untruths in front of Congress amounted to potential perjury — a criminal charge.
But Murphy was mistaken: Nielsen didn’t actually say that during her testimony. What she did say in December 2018, for example, were comments like these citing the correct figure: “What I can tell you is we stopped 3,000 special interest aliens at the border last year.” In March, she made a similar remark, only this time specifying that all 3,000 SIAs were stopped at the southern border. She didn’t, however, conflate SIAs with KSTs as Murphy originally reported.
The error prompted Nielsen’s attorneys to contact Murphy’s legal team to correct the record, which they did. On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee made public a seven-page supplement drafted by the whistleblower’s counsel to clarify what Murphy alleged — and it’s still troubling.
Simply put, the supplement says DHS misled Congress and the American public about terrorists entering the US through the southwest border, in tweets and White House-backed PowerPoint presentations, and that Nielsen was partly responsible.
Here’s what happened, per the supplement: On December 12, 2018, the DHS spokesperson’s Twitter account stated “DHS prevented 3,755 known or suspected terrorists from traveling to or entering the U.S. in FY 17,” which in addition to others included “3,028 special interest aliens.”
Murphy claims that was a knowingly misleading statement: “That tweet did not specifically clarify that the figure of 3,755 KSTs was meant to encompass all methods of entry into the entire United States, as opposed to attempts to enter exclusively by way of the southwest border, which again was the topic being publicly discussed and debated” (italics in the original).
We are happy to provide the facts -- but you never reached out. In fact, DHS prevented 3,755 known or suspected terrorists from traveling to or entering the U.S. in FY 17. That's in addition to 17,526 criminals, 1,019 gang members, and 3,028 special interest aliens. #FactsFirsthttps://t.co/4naI8XOg9x
The administration continued to boost the misleading statistic. The White House provided members of Congress a border briefing presentation on Thursday, January 2, 2019 — even though the supplement mistakenly says the session took place on the 3rd. The fourth slide notes there were “3,755 Known or suspected terrorists prevented from traveling to or entering the U.S. by DHS.” The supplement notes the slides were given to the White House “at the direction of Secretary Neilson [sic].”
Murphy believes the allegation in his original complaint, that Nielsen misled lawmakers, therefore still stands: “Whether the information had been stated in her public testimony in December 2018 or not is irrelevant. Secretary Nielsen provided this figure directly to Congress,” the supplement reads.
He continued: “It should be noted that these slides were created by or with substantial assistance from DHS, and the figure of 3,755 KSTs was prominently featured. In Mr. Murphy’s view, this was a deliberate effort by DHS/White House to distort the facts and mislead the public with inaccurate insinuations for political purposes.”
There’s another aspect to all this that’s worth mentioning.
In the supplement, Murphy repeats a scene from his original complaint: that before the March 2019 congressional hearing, he advised Nielsen in a prep session to tell lawmakers “the actual number of KSTs apprehended at the southwest border was no more than three people.” Wolf and Miles Taylor, then the DHS chief of staff, responded to Murphy, saying, “Secretary Nielsen should claim the information was classified and decline to provide clarification. Notably, Secretary Nielsen was present during this conversation.”
At the House Homeland Security hearing, Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) asked Nielsen about the 3,755 KST figure. He stated that most of those people were stopped by US officials at airports, and Nielsen agreed, adding that some are stopped even before they travel.
Then Correa, citing open source CBP figures, said only six people arrested at the southern border in fiscal year 2018 had their names on a federal KST list. Nielsen responded that such figures were classified and couldn’t provide more information — just like Wolf and Taylor had advised her to do.
The bottom line: It’s clear that, in various press conferences and public statements, Nielsen and others in the administration frequently played fast and loose with the statistics on suspected terrorists crossing the US-Mexico border in order to justify the president’s plan to build a border wall. That’s certainly not great, but it’s also not illegal.
When it comes to the accusation that Nielsen lied during sworn congressional testimony, though — which is potentially illegal — the evidence seems to be thin.
Claim 2: DHS leaders wanted intelligence on Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras changed to fit Trump’s asylum policy
In 2019, the US signed immigration agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The agreements require that migrants who travel from other countries through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to reach the US-Mexico border must first apply for asylum in one of those three countries, before applying for asylum in the US. If migrants failed to do so, US immigration authorities would deport them to one of those three countries.
This is essentially what’s known as a “safe third country” agreement. Under US law, migrants seeking asylum in the US can be rejected and instead deported to another country, as long as the migrant’s “life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” in that country, and as long as the country has a “full and fair” procedure for determining asylum.
The Trump administration’s argument is that Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador meet these criteria, and thus it’s okay to send asylum seekers in the US to those countries to request asylum instead.
Except, well, those countries are not safe — corruption, crime, violence, and lack of economic opportunity have driven hundreds of thousands to flee the countries in recent years. That’s obviously a problem for the administration’s policy.
Murphy alleges that in December 2019, when he presented intelligence reports documenting the dangerous conditions in those three Central American countries to his superiors at DHS — namely Cuccinelli — he was told to alter the reports to make it look like the countries were safer than they really are.
“Mr. Cuccinelli stated he wanted changes to the information outlining high levels of corruption, violence, and poor economic conditions in the three respective countries,” the complaint reads. Such a change wouldn’t just alter intelligence but would counter previous US government reports on the true state of those countries, like this State Department one on Guatemala outlining unlawful killings by the government.
Cuccinelli allegedly felt the reports were written solely to push back on the president’s asylum policy. He “expressed frustration with the intelligence reports, and he accused unknown ‘deep state intelligence analysts’ of compiling the intelligence information to undermine President Donald J. Trump’s ... policy objectives with respect to asylum,” the complaint reads.
Murphy said that the information in the reports featured standard and long-standing analysis, but Cuccinelli ordered Murphy and his boss “to identify the names of the ‘deep state’ individuals who compiled the intelligence reports and to either fire or reassign them immediately.” Murphy claims he told his boss that order was “illegal” and “an abuse of authority and improper administration of an intelligence program.”
No one followed through on Cuccinelli’s instruction, Murphy says.
Claim 3: DHS leadership pushed to minimize Russia’s 2020 election interference and emphasize China’s influence operations — at the White House’s direction
Because of this, Murphy alleges, his superiors at DHS told him in mid-May 2020 “to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.”
Further, Murphy alleges: “Mr. Wolf stated that these instructions specifically originated from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien.”
That’s a massive claim. The national security adviser’s job is to take in information from all parts of government, synthesize it, prepare options for the president on how to deal with all that information, and then present it in an unbiased way. What Murphy alleges in this case, though, is O’Brien is purposely telling officials at DHS to minimize a major threat, just so the president wouldn’t get mad.
A senior White House official and another person familiar with the situation told me Murphy’s claims are spot-on.
“That’s true about DHS intelligence,” the White House official said. “They only want to hear about China. Russians are angels.” As for O’Brien, the official told me he’s demanded senior directors on the National Security Council to minimize the Russia interference stuff, and other agencies got the message.
That’s been going on since O’Brien assumed his job in September 2019, the official added. Trump “does not want to hear anything negative about Russia.”
That fits with previous O’Brien actions, like when he said in February, “I haven’t seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected” and when he ordered NSC staff to stop briefing the Hill on election interference this month.
Sarah Matthews, a White House spokesperson, refutes Murphy’s allegations, though, saying O’Brien “has never sought to dictate the Intelligence Community’s focus on the threats to the integrity of our elections or on any other topic: any contrary suggestion by a disgruntled former employee, who he has never met or heard of, is false and defamatory.”
“Ambassador O’Brien has consistently and publicly advocated for a holistic focus on all threats to our elections — whether from Russia, Iran, China, or any other malign actor,” she continued.
But there’s more: Murphy claims that Wolf on July 8 told him not to send out an intelligence notification — which would typically be shared with other US intelligence agencies such as the FBI — about Russian disinformation efforts because it “made the President look bad.”
Murphy resisted, telling Wolf that “it was improper to hold a vetted intelligence product for reasons for political embarrassment.” Wolf apparently looked to bar Murphy from future meetings on the subject, and the notification was completed without Murphy’s input.
The final, completed draft, according to Murphy, was severely flawed, as it aimed “to place the actions of Russia on par with those of Iran and China in a manner that is misleading and inconsistent with the actual intelligence data.”
Still, the pressure stemming from O’Brien also seemed to affect other parts of the government. In August, a statement by National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina equated Russia’s interference efforts with those of China’s and Iran’s, and even put the China section first.
But most experts say Russia’s interference efforts are by far the more serious and direct threat to the 2020 election, whereas China’s and Iran’s activities are focused more on longer-term intelligence collection.
I think it is even worse than that. It intentionally distorts the intel to manufacture the appearance of an election interference threat from China (as opposed to a general counterintelligence threat). https://t.co/QgdjNcLTMv
What all this shows is that, at the direction of a top White House official, agencies like DHS are purposely trying to keep Russia’s interference out of the public spotlight — and Trump’s hearing range — while elevating the threat China and Iran pose.
It’s a dangerous circumstance because it would mean the machinery of the US government is prioritizing the president’s feelings over the nation’s security and the 2020 election’s integrity.
Claim 4: DHS leaders wanted to tone down the dangers of white supremacy and Russian interference while inflating the threat from left-wing groups
Murphy says that in March 2020, his team at DHS produced a Homeland Threat Assessment (HTA). This is a report that analyzes the terrorism threat to the US homeland, how dangerous each of the various threats really is, and what — if anything — can be done to mitigate them.
That assessment, requested by the agency’s previous secretary, didn’t sit well with the new leadership.
After Murphy sent the HTA around to top officials like Wolf and Cuccinelli, he was told shortly afterward that “further distribution of the HTA was prohibited” because of concerns those two men had. Specifically, they worried about “how the HTA would reflect upon President Trump” because of two sections in the assessment: one on white supremacy and another on Russian interference.
Two months later, Murphy took over the intelligence office after his boss retired and proceeded to have multiple meetings with Cuccinelli on the HTA. In those chats, per the complaint, “Mr. Cuccinelli stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups.”
Murphy, once again, responded that doing so “would constitute censorship of analysis and the improper administration of an intelligence program.”
The pressure would mount. On July 8 — the same date Murphy was told that intelligence on Russian election interference would make Trump “look bad” — Wolf echoed what Cuccinelli had said months prior.
But Wolf had another request: He wanted to see a copy of the HTA so that, among other things, information about the protests in Portland, Oregon, could be added. Murphy replied that he wouldn’t allow any edits to the assessment that altered the intelligence.
The HTA, it turns out, was afterward completed without Murphy’s involvement. A new draft was finished in August, per the complaint, and Wolf received a copy on September 3. Murphy worried “the final version of the HTA will more closely resemble a policy document with references to ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups than an intelligence document.”
That’s a major concern. Trump has made antifa — a loosely aligned militant movement of left-wing radicals who believe in using street-level force to prevent the rise of what they see as fascist movements — a centerpiece of his reelection effort. He’s turned the group into a boogeyman of sorts, and it serves as a perfect foil for a president and a conservative movement looking to cast the overwhelmingly peaceful participants in protests over police brutality as a group of violent thugs.
Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet these same weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!
While there is undoubtedly an antifa presence at some of the recent protests, there is little evidence that antifa is responsible for their (occasional) turns toward violence. Internal FBI assessments and protest-related court documents tell a consistent story: Antifa members are not responsible for the unrest.
But that’s not the story DHS wants to tell. They want to say antifa — and not white supremacist violence, which the FBI in February said is as big a priority as foreign terrorism — is the real problem.
Wolf and other government officials continue to denounce white supremacists and the hate-fueled attacks they perpetrate, but the whistleblower makes clear DHS would prefer to bolster the president’s anti-antifa message than accurately report on the racist threat.
Throughout meetings between the end of May 2020 and July 31, 2020, Wolf and Cuccinelli wanted Murphy to change intelligence assessments to align with Trump’s antifa comments. Murphy “declined to modify any of the intelligence assessments based upon political rhetoric,” and told his bosses the intelligence would reflect reality, not what the president believes.
On July 31, Wolf told Murphy he was considering reassigning him to a new, lesser post in the management division, and followed through with the move on August 1.
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Three days into the revelation that Donald Trump willfully lied to the American people about the deadly coronavirus from the absolute beginning of the crisis, and Senate Republicans are still hiding out, avoiding the press, pretending like they missed the biggest news of the week entirely.
"Haven't seen it." "Didn't read it." Or, in the case of Sen. Susan Collins, pretending like she's invisible. Collins "walked quickly into Thursday's morning series of votes, flanked by an aide who shielded her from a reporter who yelled a question in her direction about Trump downplaying the threat of coronavirus," The Hill reported. CNN adds she refused to take any questions on Wednesday or Thursday. At least her fellow vulnerable colleague, Iowa's Joni Ernst, took the question. She waffled it—"I haven't read it, I haven't seen it, so give me a chance to take a look"—but she answered the damn question.
Same with Arizona's Martha McSally and Colorado's Cory Gardner. Not reading or paying any attention to any news at all has become quite fashionable among Republicans. If you haven't read it or listened to the tapes with your very own ears, it didn't happen. At least that's Texan John Cornyn's take. He said he didn't have "personal knowledge" and didn't "have any confidence in the reporting," so he couldn't weigh in on it.
Others decided their best bet was going all in with the Trump excuse that he was trying to avert a national panic. Because if there's anything the guy who screams about antifa and Mexicans and Black Lives Matter protesters coming to rape and pillage and loot in the suburbs wants, it's not to cause a panic. North Carolina's Thom Tillis endorsed Trump's excuse. "When you're in a crisis situation, you have to inform people for their public health but you also don't want to create hysteria." When Tillis was pushed and asked if Trump should have been comparing the virus to the flu when he knew that it was far deadlier, Tillis wouldn't answer.
Trump's little golfing buddy, Lindsey Graham, piped up: "I don't think he needs to go on TV and screaming we're all going to die." Georgia's David Perdue agreed. "I understand trying to manage the psyche of the country and also look at the actions that he took. […] I look at what he did—and it was certainly a strong response." In no universe whatsoever was it a strong response, but that's a popular lie among Republicans. "Actions speak louder than words," said Louisiana's Bill Cassidy, another Republican up for reelection. "The President tends to speak loosely. We know that. That's just his pattern." And of course there’s Sen. Mitch McConnell, who combined the professed ignorance and defense of Trump into one: "Well, I haven’t read the Woodward book, but we all knew it was dangerous. The president knew it was dangerous and I think took positive steps very early on, for which he should be applauded, not criticized," he said.
Anonymously, Republican senators were less bothered by Trump's lies to the American public about a pandemic that has gone on to kill 200,000 Americans than about the fact that he would talk to Bob Woodward. "Most of us say, 'What the hell is he doing talking to Bob Woodward at 11 at night?'" one of them told The Hill.
Remember back in March, when McConnell talked about how Trump's flat-footed response to the pandemic was the fault of House Democrats and impeachment? How he said that it "diverted the attention of the government?” Yeah, that. The refusal of McConnell and fellow Republicans to actually look at the evidence, to put country over party in the impeachment, has led directly to this: 200,000 people dead. McConnell's continued insistence on putting party over country means that six months into the pandemic, he's abandoned it.
The Trump administration this week filed a 35-page amicus brief defending the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis in a lawsuit against Joshua Payne-Elliott, who was fired in 2019 for being gay and being in a same-sex marriage.
The school wrote about its decision in an open letter from Cathedral’s board Chairman Matt Cohoat and President Rob Bridges, which read, in part: “It is Archbishop Thompson’s responsibility to oversee faith and morals as related to Catholic identity within the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. Archbishop Thompson made it clear that Cathedral’s continued employment of a teacher in a public, same-sex marriage would result in our forfeiting our Catholic identity due to our employment of an individual living in contradiction to Catholic teaching on marriage. If this were to happen, Cathedral would lose the ability to celebrate the Sacraments as we have in the past 100 years with our students and community. Additionally, we would lose the privilege of reserving the Blessed Sacrament in our chapel’s tabernacle, we could no longer refer to Cathedral as a Catholic school, our diocesan priests would no longer be permitted to serve on our Board of Directors, and we would lose our affiliation with The Brothers of Holy Cross. Furthermore, Cathedral would lose its 501(c)(3) status thus rendering Cathedral unable to operate as a nonprofit school.”
Said the Department of Justice, in its brief in support of the Archdiocese: “[The] Constitution bars the government from interfering with the autonomy of religious organizations.”
NBC News reports: “Part of the DOJ’s argument relies on the ‘ministerial exception,’ a constitutional protection for religious institutions to prevent government interference in the hiring and firing of ‘ministerial’ employees. What constitutes a ‘ministerial’ employee, however, is a point of contention. The government’s brief argues that Payne-Elliott, a world language and social studies teacher at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis, fits into this category, stating that he has ‘the responsibility of educating and forming students in the faith’ and continuing to employ him would ‘interfere with the Archdiocese’s public expression of Church doctrine regarding marriage.’ The DOJ made a similar argument last year via a ‘statement of interest‘ in the case.”
Republican officials are sounding alarms amid a Trump campaign cash crunch because they’re not seeing any ads on TV.
The Washington Post reports: “Among those worried is Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, who recently told the president she was concerned his ads were not on television in states such as Michigan and Florida where Biden was blanketing the airwaves, according to people familiar with the conversation. The president shared the concern, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The decision to slash spending has been ordered by Trump’s new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, who has been restructuring the budget since taking over the campaign operation in July, after it had already spent nearly $1 billion.”
Joe Biden began running this ad yesterday, which contrasts what Trump was telling the public about COVID-19 and what he was saying in private:
The Trump administration is punishing New York City’s 9/11 firefighters, withholding millions from a fund meant to treat the illnesses they suffer thanks to their heroism in the terrorist attack 19 years ago.
The New York Daily News reports: “The Trump administration has secretly siphoned nearly $4 million away from a program that tracks and treats FDNY firefighters and medics suffering from 9/11 related illnesses, the Daily News has learned.”
The program’s director, Dr. David Prezant, that the payments started waning almost four years ago. “Meant to cover medical services for firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics treated by the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program…Prezant said he was docked about half a million dollars each year in 2016 and 2017. Then it crept up to about $630,000 in 2018 and 2019. This year, Treasury has nearly tripled its extractions, diverting $1.447 million through late August.”
Enlarge / Nikola Chairman Trevor Milton unveils the Nikola One truck in December 2016. (credit: Nikola)
Stock in electric truck startup Nikola has plunged for the second straight day after a short-selling investment firm published a bombshell report alleging that the company's December 2016 unveiling of the Nikola One truck was a brazen fraud. Nikola's stock lost 11 percent on Thursday and is down an additional 15 percent in Friday morning trading.
At the December 2016 event, Nikola Chairman Trevor Milton repeatedly described the truck as fully functional. But that wasn't quite true, as Milton admitted to Bloomberg earlier this year. The supposedly hydrogen-powered truck didn't have a hydrogen fuel cell, nor did it have the motors and gears required to drive the wheels. Milton claimed the parts had been taken out of the truck for safety reasons.
The new report from Hindenburg Research claims that the scale of Nikola's deception was even greater than was previously known. The firm claims that the prototype's supposedly functional dashboard display was powered by an extension cord snaking up from under the stage.
Pretty clear what Trump thinks of his supporters. And yet they're so desperate to maintain their white supremacy that they'll literally die for it.
On February 7, Donald Trump told Bob Woodward that coronavirus is transmitted by air. “It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed," he said. "And so, that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one.”
On February 19, it was an indoor rally in Arizona.
February 20, Colorado.
February 21, Nevada.
February 28, South Carolina.
March 2, North Carolina.
That’s six indoor rallies held when Trump knew that COVID-19 could be spread by breathing shared air.
And, of course, there was the June 20 indoor rally in Tulsa, which would have been a triumphant return to indoor rallies if people had showed up. But even many Trump supporters knew by that point that being in a crowded indoor space was dangerous. Note that it was the embarrassing attendance, not safety concerns or the death of Herman Cain, that prompted Trump to shift to outdoor events since then.
Trump knew. He didn’t care—putting his ego rush of standing in front of an adoring crowd over the safety of his supporters and public health in the communities they go home to.
Stop fucking calling the police for help. That's not why they're there.
Joe Prude, the brother of Daniel Prude, looks out into the crowd as he holds his wife, Valerie, at a march for his brother on September 7 in Rochester, New York. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
A police killing in Rochester, New York, has resurfaced questions about the use of force against people with mental illness.
The release of video of the killing of Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, in Rochester, New York, is raising new questions about the use of law enforcement as ad hoc mental health specialists in light of calls to reform, defund, or abolish the police.
There is still an ongoing investigation into Prude’s death, which has led to the resignation of all of Rochester’s top police officials. Prude was stopped by police on March 23, early on in the coronavirus pandemic, after officers responded to a call about a naked man claiming he was infected with Covid-19. He was animated and appeared distressed during his arrest, and was ultimately pinned down by officers who’d placed a hood over his head until his cries of distress — and his movements — stopped. The video, released in early September, displays Prude’s final moments as captured by an officer’s body camera, and its delayed release prompted concerns of a cover-up.
The video immediately sparked intense protests in Rochester and escalated ongoing anti-police violence protests around the United States, with demonstrators taking to the streets in honor of Prude, calling for transparency, resignations, and reforms.
Some resignations arrived on September 8, when the command staff and the chief of police, La’Ron Singletary, retired. Singletary had previously denied accusations of a cover-up, writing in his resignation announcement that “as a man of integrity, I will not sit idly by while outside entities attempt to destroy my character. The events over the past week are an attempt to destroy my character and integrity.”
The New York state attorney general’s office is continuing its investigation into the killing, having impaneled a grand jury on September 5.
The new information around Prude’s killing comes at the end of a long summer of racial unrest and protest amid a surge of attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. Additionally, Prude’s killing places a particular spotlight on activists’ calls to defund the police and invest in new emergency response systems that could respond to mental health crises like the one Prude experienced before his death.
What happened to Daniel Prude
On March 22, Prude — a Chicago native — traveled to Rochester to visit his older brother Joe Prude. Joe had invited his younger brother in hopes of helping with his mental health issues.
On the train, Daniel exhibited abnormal behavior, according to a Depew Police Department report that described him as “refusing to listen to orders” and “continu[ing] to smoke on the train.”Earlier in the evening preceding his death, Prude had been admitted to — and released from — the hospital over concerns he might be experiencing a mental break. By early in the morning on March 23, Daniel slipped out of Joe’s home, prompting his older brother to call the police for help.
The next time Joe would see Daniel was at the hospital a week later, when doctors asked him if he wanted to end life support. It would take the family months of legal work to discover the role police had played in his death.
Body camera footage recently released by Prude’s family, which were obtained following petitions to the state under freedom of information laws, show what happened to Prude.
The video, taken from several officers’ body cameras, begins at 3:16 am. It shows Prude standing naked in the middle of a street wet with snow. He appears in distress, but is mostly compliant with police. With a Taser pointed at him, Prude follows police commands, lying down on the pavement and allowing officers to cuff him.
For three minutes, Prude makes a variety of statements, including thanking the officers, asking for gloves, and requesting he be allowed to collect money. Officers then placed a mesh “spit hood” over Prude’s head, saying they did so out of fears about the coronavirus and their concern Prude might have it; he reportedly told a Rochester resident he did earlier in the night.
The hood aggravates Prude, and he becomes less compliant, offering prayers, requesting cigarettes, and making pronouncements that officers respond to with laughter. As the snow continues, officers place Prude face down on the street, applying force from several angles on his back and head to restrain him. Prude begs them to stop. They do not.
Shortly after that, Prude becomes unresponsive. Officers move his head and discuss the fluid that has issued from his mouth; some laugh. Then officers begin providing medical assistance. Nearly 10 minutes after the interaction began, they uncuff him and place him in an ambulance. A paramedic can be heard telling the officers that the drug PCP is why Prude became unresponsive, saying, “It’s not you guys’ fault. You’ve got to keep yourselves safe.” Prude died a week later, on March 30.
The Monroe County medical examiner and documents filed along with a lawsuit from Prude’s family describe the events that night as a homicide, noting that “complications of asphyxia” and PCP were contributing factors in Prude’s death.
Allegations of a cover-up
In late April, after conducting a review of the body camera footage, an investigation by the Rochester Department determined the officers involved had complied with their training and acted appropriately. “Based upon the investigation, the officers’ actions and conduct displayed when dealing with Prude appear to be appropriate and consistent with their training,” the report concluded, according to a legal complaint from Prude’s family. (This legal action, filed on September 8 and detailed by local media outlets, alleges an “internal cover up that began immediately after the incident.”)
For weeks more, the family was left in the dark as their private counsel pushed the state to release more information. According to reporting from the New York Times, it wasn’t until May 18, after procuring an attorney, that the family received the county medical examiner’s report explaining that police had killed Prude. And it wasn’t until July 31 that the family was invited to the state attorney general’s office to view the body camera footage that showed the homicide.
Before the family successfully petitioned for the video and documents relating to the killing, the Rochester police had classified Prude’s cause of death as a drug overdose. Police told the mayor, Lovely Warren, that Prude died after taking PCP. Warren cited this misinformation as a contributing factor to the initial creeping pace of the investigation.
“Experiencing and ultimately dying from the drug overdose in police custody, as I was told by the chief, is entirely different than what I ultimately witnessed, on the video,” the mayor said after the video was published.
According to a local news report by WHAM, former Police Chief La’Ron Singletary called the mayor to inform her of Prude’s death the day it happened. Singletary denied obscuring the truth.
“This is not a cover-up,” Singletary said. “Let me be clear when I say that: This is not a cover-up whatsoever.”
After the family released the video and demonstrations began, officials took much more aggressive action. The day after the video was released, seven officers involved in Prude’s arrest were suspended, and New York Attorney General Letitia James announced she would launch a grand jury investigation.
“The Prude family and the Rochester community have been through great pain and anguish,” James said in a statement about Prude’s death, noting that the grand jury was a prong in an “exhaustive investigation.”
Similarly, Rochester City Council President Loretta Scott expressed sympathy for “the anger, confusion, and betrayal felt by the community”; in another statement, Warren apologized for the killing.
“Mr. Daniel Prude was failed by our police, our mental health care system, our society, and by me,” Warren said during a press conference. “And for that, I apologize to the Prude family and all of our community.”
The mayor also announced reforms aimed at addressing systemic issues around police officers’ failure to provide assistance to people with mental illness. “We are doubling the availability of mental health professionals,” Warren said. “We will take our family crisis intervention team out of the police department and move it and its funding to the department of youth and recreation services.”
Within a week of the video’s release, Singletary announced he would be stepping down as police chief. He has denied public concerns that he hindered or covered up the investigation, arguing that “the mischaracterization and the politicization of the actions that I took after being informed of Mr. Prude’s death is not based on facts, and is not what I stand for.”
Instead, Singletary said he was resigning because “his career and integrity [have] been challenged,” by “outside entities.” According to Rochester City Newspaper, “The departures included the chief, one of his deputies, and two commanders, as well as the demotions of two other deputy chiefs and another commander, and came three days after the state attorney general announced that she would impanel a grand jury to consider evidence in Prude’s death.”
Yet the delay in publishing information concerning Prude’s case, the initial misclassification of the cause of death, and the long-standing inconsistencies in police descriptions of officer killings (for example, Laquan McDonald) have caused concern for activists who say the Prude case was a cover-up.
“Let’s keep the pressure up until all those responsible for Daniel Prude’s murder and cover up—including Mayor Lovely Warren—have resigned, taken responsibility, and donated their pensions to the families they allowed to be harmed,” Free The People Roc, a Rochester racial justice advocacy group, wrote on Facebook. “Together we have the ability to hold those in power accountable and bring an end to systemic police violence in our community.”
As noted by a popular “how many weren’t filmed” sign seen at Black Lives Matter protests this summer, many protesters fear that when there is no hard evidence, the police may very well get away with murder.
Prude’s case is representative of long-standing problems policing mental health
Stretching back to the shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs in 1984, if not earlier, the killing of people with mental illness has long been a problem for police in New York state. The persistence of this violence highlights one of the key demands of many activists who call for “defunding” police: sending funds to mental health professionals more appropriately trained to respond to mental health crises.
As Vox’s Ezra Klein explained on a recent episode of his podcast, these activists would like to reimagine emergency response for people with mental illness:
The state would have a specific and special competency in, like, people who knew how to help others with mental health. So when those folks were having a really bad night for them and for others, there’d be someone forgiving and gentle and calm — the person you would want to be called out there if it was your sibling with bipolar disorder who had lost the plot and was wandering around.
Yet as Prude’s case shows, when someone is having a crisis, they are all too often met with lethal force rather than with deescalation and expert mental health care.
“I placed a phone call for my brother to get help,” Joe Prude told reporters. “Not for my brother to get lynched.”
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It means never fucking trust a right wing government
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street on September 8, 2020, in London. | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed changes to the deal that would break international law.
The United Kingdom is threatening to renege on parts of its Brexit agreement with the European Union, potentially violating international law and upending trade negotiations with the bloc.
When the UK separated from the EU, it entered into a transition period in which both sides were supposed to work out their future relationship on everything from trade to security. That’s what’s been happening since — or not happening, really, as negotiations have largely stalled. That has meant the prospects of striking a comprehensive deal before the end-of-year deadline were looking slimmer and slimmer.
Enter the United Kingdom with a curveball of sorts.
The UK Internal Market Bill would change some of the terms in the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Brexit, which covered one of the thorniest issues in the first round of Brexit negotiations. Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, shares a border with Ireland, which is part of the EU.
Keeping that border open to enable the free flow of goods and people is central to the Good Friday Agreement, a 1998 peace deal that sought to put an end to decades of conflict in Northern Ireland through seamless North-South cooperation.
The Northern Ireland Protocol was designed to protect those interests, no matter what happened in the larger trade talks between the EU and the UK. But now, Johnson’s government has decided it would like to make unilateral changes to a plan it agreed to less than a year ago — undermining the entire Brexit deal and the already tenuous negotiations with the EU on any future relationship.
The Brexit deal is an international treaty, so if the UK were to approve this legislation, it would be violating international law. And the British government has admitted that’s exactly what it is doing. “Yes, this does break international law in a very specific and limited way,” Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis told the House of Commons on Tuesday, in response to a question from a member of Parliament.
Breaking international law, even in a “very specific and limited way,” is still, well, breaking international law. The UK’s top government lawyer quit in apparent protest. Johnson has shown he’s willing to push the boundaries of the law (proroguing Parliament, for instance), but this seems to also be a pressure tactic in negotiations — an attempt to shake up stagnant talks with the EU.
But this move could backfire instead, undermining the UK’s negotiations with the EU and showing, if anything, that the UK is not serious about its commitments.
It also sets a troubling precedent beyond Brexit. Just as it’s striking out on its own and trying to make trade deals with the rest of the world, the UK may no longer be seen as a reliable or trustworthy partner. And if a democratic country that champions the rule of law can so easily stomp on a treaty when it doesn’t suit it, it will be much harder to prevent allies and adversaries alike from doing the same.
How we got here
The United Kingdom officially left the European Union on January 31, 2020 with a deal. It took a while to get there and many things happened on the way, but in the end, the two sides agreed to a deal.
That deal, or withdrawal agreement, was essentially the Brexit divorce papers: what the UK and EU needed to do to break up. One of the big sticking points of this phase centered on the status of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Hardcore Brexit supporters, Johnson among them, opposed the initial proposal (the “Irish backstop”), which they saw as keeping the UK trapped in the EU’s institutions. Johnson was able to renegotiate the arrangement when he became prime minister last year.
The deal Johnson made with the EU would keep Northern Ireland closely aligned with many EU rules, including on goods. That avoided any checks on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. But it also meant that some goods flowing between Great Britain to Northern Ireland would be subject to checks, in case they risked ending up in Ireland — and so could end up anywhere in the EU’s single market.
A lot of the details of how this would work in practice still needed to be implemented, and a EU-UK joint committee were supposed to figure that out.
That’s what both the EU and UK agreed to in the Brexit deal, which both the EU and the UK ratified. This allowed the UK to leave with a deal on January 31, 2020, and set up phase two of Brexit: negotiating that future trade relationship by December 31, 2020.
Those negotiations have not been going well at all, and both sides are at odds on key issues, specifically state aid and fisheries. The fisheries is as much a symbolic issue as an economic one, but the state aid is really the crux of the problem.
The EU is insisting that if the UK wants tariff-free access to its markets, it can’t try to undercut EU by trying to subsidize industries or businesses, or by lowering standards on things like the environment or labor to try to give British businesses a boost.
But for the UK, which wanted to Brexit so it could be a rule-maker instead of a rule-taker, following EU rules is the opposite of what Brexit was supposed to deliver. It’s particularly anathema to the Brexiteers, which remains a vocal chunk of Johnson’s Conservative party. (The state aid issue also intersects with the Northern Ireland issue, because NI must follow the EU rules on state aid.)
Add a pandemic, which consumed leaders’ attentions and complicated negotiations by relegating EU and UK diplomats to video conference this spring, and the prospects of a deal between the UK and the EU was looking grimmer and grimmer.
A “no-deal” scenario is still a possibility: All the catastrophically disruptive things that could have happened if the UK left the EU without a plan in place before Brexit could still occur — trade disruptions and gridlocks at points of entry, just to name a few — if the EU and UK remain stuck. And, unlike last time, the upcoming December 31, 2020, deadline is harder to fudge, as it’s written into that same withdrawal agreement — which, again, is an international treaty.
But the UK is now essentially saying, “Sure, it’s an international treaty — so what?”
What the UK is proposing (the very, very short version)
EU-UK talks on the future relationship resumed in London thisTuesday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged the EU to show “more realism” in talks, and Johnson also set a deadline of October 15 to reach some sort of agreement. The EU, in turn, has told the UK that it needs to get real about its own demands.
But just as things already looked bad, the United Kingdom broke the news that, actually, it wanted to revisit the first Brexit deal and make some unilateral changes. The text of the proposed legislation was just introduced Wednesday.
The prime minister’s office has defended it as an attempt to clear up “ambiguities” in the withdrawal agreement in case talks between Brussels and London fall apart. Amazingly, Johnson claimed the pressure of needing to get a deal done quickly left issues open-ended, and thus the UK had to fill in the gaps.
“It was agreed at pace in the most challenging possible political circumstances to deliver on a decision by the British people, with the clear overriding purpose of protecting the special circumstances of Northern Ireland,” Johnson’s spokesperson said Wednesday, though he said last year the withdrawal agreement was a “great new deal that takes back control” and an “oven-ready deal.”
The short story is this: The UK has proposed a law that would override portions of the withdrawal agreement when it comes to that protocol on Northern Ireland. And it’s pretty clear that this is the UK doing what it wants, as the legislation says it will “have effect notwithstanding inconsistency or incompatibility with international or other domestic law.”
The proposed legislation would affect state aide, and also the flow of goods between the rest of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Here’s an example that, Colin Murray, a reader of law at the University of Newcastle explained to me: the EU-UK joint committee is supposed to decide which goods flowing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland might be subject to tariffs, if they’re at risk of making it into the EU single market.
But if they can’t agree, then the default is the goods may be at risk. So now the UK is saying, actually, nope, we just get to decide — never mind all that commission stuff.
The UK’s proposed legislation would, quite simply, violate the terms of the withdrawal agreement. The Northern Ireland Protocol was the compromise plan to keep that border open on the island or Ireland — but it always came with this caveat that it would entail checks somewhere else. But Johnson has repeatedly downplayed the need for those checks, though he himself agreed to them. And now it looks very much like an attempt to wriggle out of that reality.
“The UK knew what it was signing up to,” Murray said. “Now, simply, the government doesn’t like what it signed up to.”
By possibly backtracking on this plan, the UK brings back uncertainty to the status of Northern Ireland. It raises the dilemma once again: How to protect the EU single market while also avoiding the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland?
This was the very thing the protocol agreed to between the UK and EU attempted to solve. Now, the UK is muddling that, increasing fears that this move could undermine the Good Friday Agreement.
The UK introduced text to this legislation to break its Brexit deal, but that hasn’t actually happened yet, and would still require Parliament to agree. Johnson does, thanks to elections last year, have a very big majority in the House of Commons. But some Conservatives, including our old friend Theresa May, worry that this legislation would undermine trust in the UK.
Experts I spoke to see a few different dynamics driving this decision. One is Johnson himself, who used the furor over Brexit to get into power and replace May as prime minister. He promised to “get Brexit done,” and while he achieved an exit, that deal might not have been has “oven-ready” as advertised, the fine print a little less favorable to the UK than Johnson promised. This is almost an attempt to try to fudge reality, again.
Also, the future negotiations aren’t going well, and the EU is unlikely to concede on state aid. That impasse is making the prospect of a no-deal more likely. So this may be Johnson’s attempt to see who might blink first, a kind of “macho brinkmanship,” as Murray put it.
Richard Whitman, professor of political and international relations at the University of Kent, who spoke to me before the text of the bill was introduced, told me that that the timing could be seen as provocative move. The UK is, in a way warning the EU, he said: “If we don’t do a deal between the two of us on the future relationship, then there’s an awful lot of loose ends that are probably going to be tied up — in ways that we will tie them up rather than necessarily negotiate them with you to tie them up.”
And for Johnson’s supporters who are skeptical of the EU and want the hardest break with the bloc possible, this may be the kind of leadership they want to see: someone who isn’t going to be bullied by those EU bureaucrats. And if the EU and the UK do make a deal, Johnson can help sell it as a victory, proof that his pressure campaign against the EU worked.
But this idea — that if the UK is tough on the EU, it’ll cave — may be unrealistic. It could have the opposite effect, and blow up the Brexit negotiations for good.
It’s pretty simple: Why would the EU want to keep negotiating with the UK if they know they’re going to renege on the very things the UK negotiated just last year? Why would the EU make compromises and concessions, if the UK will just turn around and do whatever it wants?
The implications extend beyond Brexit, too: Why would anyone want to make a trade deal, or any agreement, if the UK is not a reliable partner?
“Internationally, this potentially sets a bad precedent for future trade deals and risks damaging the UK’s reputation,” Chris Stafford, a doctoral researcher in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, told me in an email. “International trade deals take a lot of time and effort to negotiate, so some countries may be hesitant to do this if the UK shows it is willing to just ignore such agreements when it suits them.”
This is particularly relevant with the United States, which is in negotiations with the UK on a trade deal. Members of Congress, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, have said they wouldn’t approve any US-UK trade deal if the UK violates the law and threatens the Good Friday Agreement. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s foreign policy adviser also reiterated the candidate’s commitment to the Northern Ireland peace processon Twitter, linking to a New York Times story about Johnson’s attempts to wiggle out of the Brexit deal.
All in all, this may make the prospect of a no-deal more likely, not less. That would be bad for all parties, but particularly for the UK. It could cause serious economic disruption at the exact same time the country, and the world, are trying to recover from the economic catastrophe caused by Covid-19.
But, weirdly, the pandemic-caused economic crisis could actually help Johnson and his allies by providing some cover for any economic fallout that comes from the Brexit debacle. If the UK public is focused on the pandemic and its consequences, they may not be paying attention to Brexit anymore. There will be economic disruption — but there’s already economic disruption. As Murray said, the UK government can file it all under Covid-19, diverting the blame for a problem of their own making.
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People stop to take morning pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge covered in smoke from wildfires on September 9. | Eric Risberg/AP
Air pollution may be the most dangerous element of the massive fires.
Record-setting wildfires burning across Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington are ejecting soot, ash, and smoke into the air amid searing heat.
Thick clouds of particles are wafting over cities and rural areas alike, and turned the Bay Areas’s azure skies ruddy on Wednesday. Why is the air so orange? The tiny motes that comprise smoke are scattering the longer light wavelengths of reds and oranges to overwhelm the shorter wavelengths of blue, dimming the sun and creating a midday twilight.
But beyond the eerie glow, the smoke may be one of the biggest health threats from wildfires to people who are even hundreds of miles from the flames.
Eric Risberg/AP
San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid and Salesforce Tower seen against an orange-hued sky from wildfires on September 9.
In several areas along the West Coast, air quality has degraded to the worst category: “hazardous.” For example, in Mendocino County, wildfires have made breathing the air like smoking 12 cigarettes in a day.
“The one thing that we’ve noticed in this season in particular … is just the geographic scale of the wildfire smoke, because there are so many large fires,” said Amy MacPherson, a spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board.
AirNow.gov
Much of the West Coast is breathing dirty air due to wildfires.
The smoke from these wildfires is adding more stress to communities already battling Covid-19 and health systems already burdened with extra patients. The dirty air could also worsen the symptoms associated with the respiratory infection. And in the coming days and weeks, the ongoing fires may continue to rage, with new ones cropping up.
Smoke from wildfires is posing a health hazard to millions of people
It’s easy to lose sight of the smoke for the flames, especially when so many massive fires are burning at the same time. However, the billowing plumes from fires can become a major threat to the heart and lungs.
The smoke itself is a mixture of gases and particles like volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, soot, and ash. Right away, they can cause watery eyes and scratchy throats. But the biggest threats from smoke come from some of the tiniest particles, particularly those with a diameter smaller than 2.5 microns, known as PM2.5. These particles can penetrate deep into the airways, exacerbating heart and lung problems.
“Individuals with heart and lung conditions should be aware of the additional risk during smoky conditions as wildfire smoke can increase the potential risk for serious cardiovascular and cerebrovascular conditions, such as heart attack and stroke,” a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health told Vox in an email. “These risks are especially significant among persons over the age of 65.”
Persistent exposure to these kinds of fine particles can be deadly. According to the World Health Organization, fine particle pollution, which can come from trucks, factories, and dust, leads to 7 million deaths per year around the world. Wildfire smoke poses a unique health threat compared to pollution from other sources. Suzanne Paulson, chair of the department of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of California Los Angeles, noted there is emerging research indicating that wildfire smoke may be more toxic for a given mass than typical urban pollution.
“The thing that is really different about wildfire smoke particles is that they have a bunch of unburned [or] partly burned plant material,” she said. “In the general urban pollution soup, it’s a relatively small component, whereas in wildfire smoke it’s very dominant.”
That unburned organic plant material can interact with metal elements, from other sources or the plants themselves, and increase the toxicity of those metals in the body. That can lead to more inflammation or cause neurological problems.
Parts of the West Coast like Los Angeles also have landscape and climate features that enhance the risk of pollutants like PM2.5. “We have really amazing geography for trapping pollution over the city,” Paulson said. Mountains surrounding Los Angeles can act as a basin, while the city’s location between the ocean and the desert creates multiple atmospheric configurations that pin down dirty air over Angelenos.
Another factor making the ongoing fire season’s air quality so hazardous is the sheer scale of the ongoing wildfires. With the amount of smoke these blazes are spewing, it becomes almost impossible to avoid it, even indoors.
Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
The Bidwell Bar Bridge is surrounded the Bear Fire in Oroville, California, on September 9. Oroville is 70 miles north of California’s capital, Sacramento.
Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
A Butte County firefighter douses flames at the Bear fire in Oroville, California, on September 9.
Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP via Getty Images
An orange sky filled with wildfire smoke hangs above hiking trails in Concord, California, on September 9.
“Outdoor pollution always comes inside,” said Ronald Cohen, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at UC Berkeley. “How much it does that depends on the local construction of homes.”
In parts of the West Coast with year-round moderate weather, like the San Francisco Bay Area, buildings are not always sealed to keep air out or in. In the Los Angeles area, about one in five households don’t have air conditioning. In the Bay Area, almost two-thirds of homes are without cooling.
With the recent record-breaking heat across the West Coast, stagnant air under high atmospheric pressure has trapped pollution from wildfires over urban areas.
The California Department of Public Health recommends staying indoors during periods of high air pollution and using tactics like running air conditioners with air filters and using a room air cleaner that has a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter.
But people without adequate cooling have been forced to choose between sealing up inside and opening windows to the smoke.
On top of this, the region is also coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the hazards of wildfire pollution can increase the risks of Covid-19. “Exposure to air pollutants in wildfire smoke can irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, alter immune function, and increase susceptibility to respiratory infections, likely including COVID-19,” according to the CDC.
Together, these factors are fueling an urgent health crisis across a massive swath of the western United States.
Wildfire season is far from over
Wildfires in the western United States this year have already proved to be massive and stunning.
According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), wildfires across the state have now burned more than 2.2 million acres this year across all jurisdictions, a record amount, and there’s still four months left in the year. The ongoing fires have killed at least eight people and destroyed more than 3,300 structures.
“Wildfires have always been a part of the landscape in the West, but they’ve gotten so much worse,” said Paulson.
There are several key factors making wildfires more dangerous, almost all of them driven by humans. People are building more in high-risk areas for fires. That increases the risk of igniting a wildfire and the damage they can do. While many of the blazes that ignited in California in August were triggered by lightning strikes, the vast majority of wildfires are caused by people, whether via unattended camp fires, poorly protected power lines, or arson.
People have also suppressed many of the naturally occurring wildfires in the region, allowing vegetation to accumulate and subsequently dry out during periods of drought and extreme heat. That leaves more fuel to burn than would have been present if fires were to burn their natural course, or if more prescribed burns were conducted.
And humans are changing the climate. The surge in heat trapping gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is causing the planet to warm up. That is causing some of the forests in the West to dry out, making them vulnerable to pests like bark beetles and allowing them to burn more readily. Climate change is also increasing the likelihood of periods of extreme heat that help provide the ideal fuel for massive wildfires.
That’s why crimson skies and hazy air have become an alarmingly regular part of life for many in the West. “We find ourselves in these fire seasons where the number of people who are impacted by multiple days of high concentrations of particulate matter is really unique to the last few years,” said the California Air Resources Board’s MacPherson. “We’re talking millions of people.”
Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
San Francisco’s City Hall on September 9.
Philip Pacheco/Getty Images
A view of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco on September 9.
As we head into autumn, California’s strong seasonal winds are also poised to pick up. The Diablo winds in the north and the Santa Ana winds in the south can gust at speeds topping 70 mph, rapidly spreading fires and embers over wide swaths of dried out vegetation.
The combination of fuel, heat, high winds, and low humidity have led to red flag warnings for 28 million people living across Arizona, Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada. In California, the coming days will bring “strong, gusty winds and low humidity, increasing activity on current fires and can cause new fire starts to grow rapidly,” according to Cal Fire.
So until cooler, wetter weather sets in, fires will continue to burn, and it may be months before the West can breathe easy.
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People buy tickets for Disney’s “Mulan” at a movie theater in Bangkok, Thailand, on September 8, 2020. | Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP via Getty Images
The backlash to the film shows human rights issues in China are getting widespread attention.
Disney’s new live-action film Mulan has become a global sensation, but not just for the reason the storied production company hoped.
Some viewers who paid to stream the movie on Disney+ last weekend found something troubling in the credits: Disney thanked eight government bodies in Xinjiang, a western province in China where around 2 million Uighur Muslims have been forced into concentration camps by the Chinese government. It turns out parts of Mulan were filmed in Xinjiang two years ago, well after the world knew about Beijing’s plan to “reeducate” Uighurs with Communist Party doctrine.
That’s simply shocking, as there’s no excuse for Disney executives to have been unaware of the human rights abuses taking place just miles from the filming sites. Plus, the film had courted controversy for some time, as its lead actress last year supported Hong Kong’s law enforcement over pro-democracy protesters, launching the #BoycottMulan social media movement.
Even worse, the film credits specifically praise the police security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang with a large Uighur population. That bureau is tasked with running some of the internment camps, experts say, and was blacklisted last year along with other Chinese law enforcement agencies by the US Commerce Department, prohibiting US companies from selling or supplying products to them.
It’s unclear if Disney and Turpan’s police bureau or other similar agencies interacted much or at all during filming, but it’s still not a good look.
A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry this week insisted the camps are simply “vocational skills education and training centers,” even though ample evidence suggests that isn’t true. Disney didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Mulan specifically thank the publicity department of CPC Xinjiang uyghur autonomous region committee in the credits.
You know, the place where the cultural genocide is happening.
Some who’ve seen the film say it also promotes Han supremacism (or “Han chauvinism,” as Mao Zedong termed it), the idea that all parts of China — including native Uighur and Kazakh lands, among others — should be governed and dominated by ethnic Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China. Many leaders in the ruling Communist Party, like autocratic President Xi Jinping, are Han.
The villain in the new Disney film leads a group of assassins clearly coded as Muslims, said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies Chinese oppression of Uighurs. For instance, the characters are dark-skinned, wear turbans, and are dressed eerily like ISIS terrorists in their videos, some experts say.
The film “traffics in Islamophobia,” Byler argues, and presents Mulan, the protagonist, as “a defender of the Chinese colonization of northwest China.” He added: “It was as if Xinjiang was simply a blank canvas, a land without an indigenous history.”
Human rights activists and many regional experts are angry at all of this, with some using the hashtag #BoycottMulan to build a social media campaign around awareness about the film.
“In Hollywood movies, they claim to embrace social justice. In fact, they kowtow to autocratic China disgracefully,” Nathan Law, an activist pushing for a more democratic Hong Kong, tweeted on Monday. “They shamed themselves by upholding values they don’t even believe in. Movies, should be more than money.”
Law has another reason to be upset about the film. Last year, Liu Yifei — the Chinese-born American actress who plays Mulan in the movie — came out in support of law enforcement officials in Hong Kong who were cracking down on pro-democracy demonstrators. “I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong,” she wrote in August 2019 on Weibo, a Chinese social media site. Her statement prompted the initial calls to boycott the film.
It’s unclear if the social media campaign will doom the film’s success, which cost $200 million to make. It’s reeled in upward of $6 million so far and will likely make much more when it premieres in China on Friday. Still, #BoycottMulan has shown that the Chinese government’s human rights violations will no longer be ignored — and even companies as powerful as Disney may need to change how they engage with China going forward.
“There is clearly a cost now to companies who remain intentionally ignorant of what’s going on in China,” said James Millward, a Georgetown University world history professor.
Corporations like Disney could put real pressure on China over its treatment of the Uighurs — if they chose to
Some major companies now find themselves enveloped in a firestorm, Millward said, whenever it becomes clear that they haven’t pushed back on Beijing for its mistreatment of the Uighurs.
At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, the iconic American company has helped raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests.
Last year, Japanese clothing companies Muji and Uniqlo promoted their use of Xinjiang cotton. “Made of organic cotton delicately and wholly handpicked in Xinjiang, the men’s Oxford Shirts of MUJI are soft and breathable with a clean design,” Muji’s website read. Uniqlo’s site also at the time boasted its clothes were “Made from Xinjiang Cotton, famous for its superb quality.”
Activists publicly shamed both companies. “What! They’re actually using that as a slogan?” Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch, told Australia’s ABC last year. “Have they somehow missed two straight years of news about gross human rights violations in Xinjiang?”
Now, says Georgetown’s Millward, “we can put Disney in an elite section of companies caught in this firestorm.”
For a company like Disney, that could mean not filming in the country anymore, delaying releases for their viewers, or — at the most extreme level — completely cut off any ties to the country. But any one of those options, from the smallest to the nuclear one, are hard for any corporation to take, mainly because China is such a large and lucrative market. And if companies do anything to anger Beijing, like not promote a government-friendly narrative in a movie about China, there’s a chance Disney would lose access to that market.
“They are caught between a rock and a hard place,” Millward said.
And yet, human rights groups have urged other major brands to cut ties with suppliers in Xinjiang. As Vox’s Terry Nguyen reported, “In March, the nonpartisan think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a report detailing how 82 foreign and Chinese companies have direct or indirect ties to the Xinjiang region and beyond based on their supply chain.” Among those companies: Amazon, Apple, Dell, Nike, Nintendo, Uniqlo, Victoria’s Secret, and Zara.
Companies could also leverage the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. That kind of event provides a big boost to a nation’s image — just like the 2008 games in China’s capital did. Corporate sponsorships of the events provide even more international legitimacy. A company may see paying to have its logo featured at the games as just an endorsement of the competition, but others will see it also as an endorsement of the host country.
A lack of corporate sponsors would also mean a lack of funds, and a large public outcry could in theory force the Olympic Committee to pick a new country to host the games. That’s a long shot, experts told me, but those who want China to stop interning Uighurs and other minorities should take advantage of the high-profile event to put Beijing on notice.
For now, though, big movie companies might do better to avoid filming in Xinjiang and not help the Chinese government paper over human rights atrocities.
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Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atriedes in Denis Villeneuve's upcoming adaptation of Dune.
Warner Bros. debuted the first trailer today for Dune, director Denis Villeneuve's ambitious (could it be anything else?) adaptation of Frank Herbert's sprawling epic novel. It was preceded by a livestreamed event in which Late Show host Stephen Colbert interviewed Villeneuve and several cast members: Timothée Chalamet (who stars as Paul Atreides), Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Jason Momoa, and Sharon Duncan-Brewster.
Dune is set in the distant future and follows the fortunes of various noble houses in what amounts to a feudal interstellar society. Much of the action takes place on the planet Arrakis, where the economy is driven largely by a rare life-extending drug called melange ("the spice") that also conveys a kind of prescience. There's faster-than-light space travel, a prophecy concerning a messianic figure, giant sandworms, and lots of battles, as protagonist Paul Atreides (a duke's son) contends with rival House Harkonnen and strives to defeat the forces of Shaddam IV, Emperor of the Known Universe.
That brief synopsis hardly does justice to the sweep and enormous cultural influence of Herbert's novel. When it was first published, the Chicago Tribune called it "one of the monuments of modern science fiction." Astronomers have used the names of fictional planets in Dune to identify various topographical features on Saturn's moon Titan. Herbert wrote five sequels, and the franchise also includes board games, computer games, and numerous prequels and sequels written by his son, Brian Herbert, with Kevin J. Anderson.
Enlarge / A satellite image of the state of play Thursday across the tropics. (credit: NOAA)
The historical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season—the point at which, climatologically speaking, the most activity takes place—is today. And this being 2020, the Atlantic tropics are not wanting in vim and vigor.
The latest outlook from the National Hurricane Center shows two active named systems in the Atlantic: tropical storms Paulette and Rene. Although both of these storms should turn north well short of the continental United States, there is some concern about Paulette reaching Bermuda as a Category 1 hurricane by early next week.
Looking beyond these two storms reveals no fewer than four "areas of interest" to watch on the hurricane map.
Not a disastrously bad haul, but still $150 million behind the Biden campaign. The two campaigns were only separated by around $5 million in cash-on-hand at the end of July, so that gap will have been massive at the end of August. (We’ll know the exact numbers when fundraising reports are filed, and that’s soon.) That dramatic disparity in spending now means that the Trump camp can’t keep pace with Team Biden—not a place they want to be when lagging so far behind in the polls.
So let’s take a look at what that means with the air war.
The Biden campaign is up this week in AZ, FL, MI, MN, NC, NV, OH (not statewide), PA and WI They have canceled ad schedules they had previously booked for this week in NH (including Portland, ME market)
The Trump campaign is only advertising in six states, just five of them real battlegrounds. Pulling out of Iowa and Ohio makes sense. If Trump is losing those states, he’s already lost Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the campaign. Trump already wasted tens of million in those places, so someone there is finally making smarter calls.
Nevada and New Hampshire never really became competitive, so it makes sense that they’d quit pretending to compete for them. But not sure why Minnesota is on their list, while Arizona and Pennsylvania are not. That campaign is weird. Pennsylvania, in particular, is extra weird—the campaign had ad reservations ready to go, but they proactively cancelled them.
Trump campaign was supposed to go back on air in PA this week - but has pulled its ad buy, per @maxasteele of American Bridge. Campaign has been dark in PA since early Aug. (Super PAC America First Action has aired ads)
On the Biden side, it is clear they are focused on not making the mistakes of 2016 by taking core battlegrounds for granted. They’re looking to lock down Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and not taking Nevada and Minnesota for granted. Beyond the other core battlegrounds of Florida and North Carolina, they’re expanding the map in Ohio. But where is Georgia? Or Iowa?
Of course, the ability of this advertising to move numbers is suspect at best at the presidential level. How many people do you think exist who would be swayed by a 30- or 60-second television spot? But what other tools does the Trump campaign have to move public opinion against Biden? His Twitter account? It’s a joke that preaches to the deplorables.
There is one more wild card—Trump’s campaign is one big grift, and nowhere do we see that more than with its fundraising costs. As of July, the campaign had raised $1 billion, yet $350 million of that had been eaten up by “fundraising expenses.” The official party line is that those costs were inflated by the need to create fundraising infrastructure. If that’s true, then fundraising expenses should be markedly lower in August. But if 35% of their fundraising continues to get eaten by their grift, that would mean around $74 million fewer dollars to spend on actual campaign work. It would also mean that the leftover $135 million would be much closer to what I assumed would be their August haul. We’ll know one way or another in a few days!
Meanwhile, Trump has moved on from a week of defending himself for calling troops suckers for enlisting, and wounded and fallen soldiers “losers” for having sacrificed for their country, to defending himself over having lied about the coronavirus pandemic from the very beginning. And that’s worth more than any money Biden could ever raise.
There were 70,630 new cases of COVID-19 in children reported between Aug. 20 and Sept. 3—and, with limited testing for kids, that may be a significant underestimate of the real number. More than 500,000 U.S. children have now had coronavirus, accounting for nearly 10% of total cases.
In Florida alone, 10,513 children under 18 have tested positive since schools reopened in person, though the state is working hard to keep detailed data about kids, schools, and COVID-19. Florida’s positive test rate for kids is 14.5%, with schools reopening in person despite overall positive test rates well over the recommended 5% in much of the state.
Duval County, Florida, tried to be transparent with its school coronavirus data, only to have the effort shut down by the state, while in Orange County, the school district started reporting data on its Facebook page after the county health department’s information releases were blocked.
The Florida Department of Health says data will be coming … sometime. “In the coming days or weeks,” supposedly. Parents are left searching for information on which to make their decisions about their children’s schooling, and the information isn’t there.
“I have filed public records requests like we were told, but no one will even fill them,” one Manatee County parent told The Washington Post. “This is outrageous, and I am worried for my teacher friends and our children in Manatee.”
”Our family would have to see some more information on the case numbers, and on mask compliance and social distancing, before we send our kids back,” a Pinellas County parent said.
As with adults, there are significant racial disparities in coronavirus infection and hospitalization. Nationally, “[a] disproportionate number of cases are reported in Black and Hispanic children and in places where there is high poverty,” American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Sally Goza said in a news release. “We must work harder to address societal inequities that contribute to these disparities.”
Florida doesn’t break down its infections among children by race and ethnicity, but more than three-quarters of those who’ve gotten Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome have been Black or Hispanic. Among younger adults in Florida, “African-Americans make up 18 percent of Florida’s population but have accounted for 44 percent of deaths.”
We know that COVID-19 numbers are rising among kids, and that it’s hitting Black and Latino kids the hardest. But there is so much we don’t know thanks to the low testing rates for kids and the data-hiding shenanigans of some states and, of course, Team Trump. In this case, what we don’t know literally can kill.
The House Intelligence Committee has released the whistleblower complaint brought forward by ex-Department of Homeland Security principal deputy undersecretary Brian Murphy, of the department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis. In it, Murphy reports that illegally appointed acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf ordered him to alter multiple U.S. intelligence assessments to bury intelligence findings detrimental to Trump and exaggerate claims supportive of Trump's own claims. If true—and there is absolutely no reason to believe it is not—then Donald Trump's administration explicitly directed officials to undermine U.S. intelligence findings in service of Trump-friendly propaganda.
Among Murphy's claims:
• When preparing a report on national security threats, Trump official Ken Cuccinelli "stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe." After Murphy refused, Chad Wolf and Cuccinelli blocked that report from publication.
• In May of this year, Wolf ordered Murphy to "cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States." He was instead instructed to "start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran."
• In 2018, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified that over 3,700 "known or suspected terrorists" had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. In a meeting in preparation for her additional testimony in March 2019, Murphy "provided Secretary Nielsen with documentation reflecting that the number of [known or suspected terrorists] crossing the southwest border only consisted of no more than three individuals, not 3,755 individuals as she had previously attested to in her testimony." The response by Wolf and former official Miles Taylor was to tell Nielsen she should "claim the details were classified" and "deflect away from the addressing the significant discrepancy." When Murphy objected, he was removed from the meeting.
All three incidents reflect not just a willingness by Wolf and other Trump-appointed officials to politicize intelligence findings, but to alter intelligence findings to better match Trump administration claims and propaganda. Repeatedly.
Doing his best Dick Cheney impersonation, Attorney General William Barr pretended on Wednesday that the Justice Department defending Donald Trump against a personal defamation lawsuit was just another ho-hum run of the mill governmental pursuit.
"This has become somewhat routine to the extent that the certification process has been delegated to an attorney in the tort section of the civil division of the Justice Department," Barr said during a press conference defending the move.
The Westfall Act, the law Barr invoked to justify the Justice Department acting as Trump's personal lawyer, gives federal employees immunity from lawsuits arising in response to acts performed in the course of their official duties. In other words, if you get sued for something you did on the job as a federal official, the Justice Department can properly represent you.
But in this case, as CNN analyst Elie Honig noted: "The president got accused of rape, he called the accuser a liar, and he's getting sued for defamation, and Bill Barr and Donald Trump are saying, just another day at the office of the presidency."
Or more accurately, just another day at the office of Trump's bogus presidency.
What really happened is, Trump lost in New York State court and was about to undergo a discovery process that would include him providing a DNA sample and giving a deposition in the case.
"Realizing that there was no valid basis to appeal that decision in the New York courts," explained Robbie Kalpan, the attorney who brought the lawsuit on behalf of journalist E. Jean Carroll, "Trump enlisted the U.S. Department of Justice to replace his private lawyers and argue that when he lied about sexually assaulting our client, explaining that 'she wasn't my type,' he was acting in his official capacity as President of the United States."
Kaplan called the assertion "shocking," even in today's political environment.
"It offends me as a lawyer, and offends me even more as a citizen," she added. "Trump's effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent, and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out."
“Without precedent” is now "routine" at Barr's Justice Department, and he can even say it without the crooked slanting mouth that Dick Cheney always donned during his biggest lies. Barr just plain lies through his teeth with a straight face. Impressively corrupt.
Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward definitively put personal profit over journalism or the national interest by holding back the coronavirus bombshells Donald Trump gave him, keeping them secret for months until Woodward could profit from a book. Woodward would still have had a newsworthy book without the coronavirus material, too—Trump told him so many offensive and dangerous things on other subjects that the book would have gotten big headlines no matter what.
Woodward has Trump bragging that “I have built a nuclear—a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody—what we have is incredible.” Anonymous sources confirmed the existence of a secret new weapons system … that Trump should not have been casually disclosing to a reporter.
Trump also offered a lot of casual racism, much of it in conversations taped by Woodward. While Trump acknowledged the existence of institutional racism in the United States, when Woodward asked him whether, as privileged white men, they had the responsibility to try to understand Black people’s “anger and pain,” Trump responded: “No. You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”
Trump also framed it as an act of generosity that he doesn’t refer to his predecessor as “Barack Hussein,” and blatantly projected his own insecurities onto Obama. “I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump said. “I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.”
His opinion of another leader, however, was much higher. That would be North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who Trump raved about to Woodward, describing him as “far beyond smart” and bragging: “He never smiled before. I’m the only one he smiles with.” (This is false.)
Trump even acknowledged his affection for authoritarian leaders, saying: “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them.”
”You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?” he added. (It’s not hard to explain: Trump fancies himself a big tough guy but really he’s weak enough to be impressed by people who seem like what he wishes to be.)
Fueling the ongoing strains in the relationship between Trump and the military, Woodward reports that Trump told White House trade adviser Peter Navarro: “Not to mention my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals.” Apparently real men, non-pussy men, prefer trade deals to military alliances?
Woodward has done real damage to the nation by holding back the things Trump said about the coronavirus early on, when he was still lying to the public about its dangers. But in a reasonable world, the rest of this stuff—the racism, the affection for dictators, the bragging about secret weapons systems—would also have been a giant scandal.
Bev Veals, a cancer survivor struggling to afford health care in North Carolina made a call to Senator Thom Tillis’s (R-NC) office to try and get some assistance or advice but was shocked by the response she received from a staffer there, WRAL reports.
Asked Veals to the staffer on one of the calls she recorded: “You’re saying that, if you can’t afford it, you don’t get to have it, and that includes health care?”
The staffer replied: “Yeah, just like if I want to go to the store and buy a new dress shirt. If I can’t afford that dress shirt, I don’t get to get it.”
“But health care is something that people need, especially if they have cancer,” Veals replied.
“Well, you got to find a way to get it,” the staffer replied, adding, “Sounds like something you’re going to have to figure it out.”
Tillis’s spokesman told WRAL that the staffer has been disciplined: “The way Mrs. Veals was talked to by a staff assistant in our Washington office was completely inappropriate and violates the code of conduct Senator Tillis has for his staff, which is why immediate disciplinary action has been taken.”
[The nation's leading GOP election attorney throws cold water on election fraud claims]
Republican election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg spent his career helping Republican candidates get elected. As part of those efforts, he was on the lookout for voter fraud. As he details in a Washington Post op-ed, such fraud is very hard to find.
The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there's no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged. Absentee ballots use the same process as mail-in ballots — different states use different labels for the same process.
The Trump 2016 campaign, of which I was not a part, could produce no hard evidence of systemic fraud. Trump established a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017 to expose all the fraud he maintains permeates our elections. He named the most vociferous hunters of Democratic election fraud to run the commission. It disbanded without finding anything.
The Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database has compiled every instance of any kind of voter fraud it could find since 1982. It contains 1,296 incidents, a minuscule percentage of the votes cast. A study of results in three states where all voters are mailed actual ballots, a practice at the apex of the president's outrage, found just 372 possible cases of illegal voting of 14.6 million cast in the 2016 and 2018 general elections — 0.0025 percent.
If anything, Ginsberg goes easy on those who make broad election fraud allegations.
When Kris Kobach was Kansas Secretary of State, he pushed election law reforms premised on the need to root out election fraud and, in particular, prevent voting by non-citizens. When these restrictions were challenged in court, his case crumbled. Given the opportunity to present evidence and expert testimony, Kobach was unable to substantiate his fears of stolen elections. Kobach was eventually held in contempt and sanctioned by the court.
The evidence of widespread election fraud is woefully thin. When it happens, it may affect local races (where the total vote counts are much smaller). It is impossible to prove election fraud is not happening, as it is impossible to prove a negative. (To those convinced we have a problem, the lack of evidence only shows that those stealing elections are even more devious than we thought!) While election administration in parts of the country may be rickety and inefficient, there is no reason to think national elections are compromised, let alone that the Presidential race could be stolen.
That said, when efforts to subvert election laws are uncovered, they should be prosecuted aggressively. Election law violations should be taken seriously. With that in mind, here's more from Ginsberg's op-ed:
Legions of Republican lawyers have searched in vain over four decades for fraudulent double voting. At long last, they have a blatant example of a major politician urging his supporters to illegally vote twice.
The only hitch is that the candidate is President Trump.
The Justice Department is taking over the legal defense of President Donald Trump in a defamation suit brought by a New York writer who claims Trump raped her in a department store dressing room 25 years ago.
In moving the case from state to federal court Tuesday and relieving Trump’s privately paid attorneys, Justice Department lawyers said they’d concluded that Trump was acting within the scope of his official duties as president when he denied the claims from former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
If the move is upheld in the courts, it could effectively shut down the suit.
Carroll’s lawyers immediately denounced the maneuver and said it was preposterous that Trump was engaged in official business when he disputed Carroll’s allegation, including by declaring of the journalist and former “Saturday Night Live“ writer: “She’s not my type.”
“Even in today’s world, that argument is shocking,” Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan said in a statement. “It offends me as a lawyer, and offends me even more as a citizen. Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent, and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.”
Kaplan also noted that the move came as Trump faced a deadline to appeal a ruling from a New York judge requiring him to provide a DNA sample and sit for a deposition about the episode. The move to federal court will likely scuttle that ruling.
The Justice Department’s legal filings provided little insight about why officials stepped in 10 months after the suit was filed, but a career attorney who oversees the defense of tort cases for the federal government suggested that new facts had come to light that led to the decision.
“On the basis of information now available with respect to the incidents alleged in the complaint … Defendant Donald J. Trump was acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States at the time of the alleged conduct,” Civil Division Torts Branch Director James Tuohey Jr., said in a certification justifying the move.
Tuohey did not elaborate, but another filing by DOJ lawyers pointed to five cases where defamation suits against federal officials have been handled as suits against the government.
“Numerous courts have recognized that elected officials act within the scope of their office or employment when speaking with the press, including with respect to personal matters, and have therefore approved the substitution of the United States in defamation actions,” the Justice Department attorneys wrote.
They cited a suit filed last year alleging that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Debra Haaland (D-N.M.) libeled students from a Catholic high school in Kentucky who got into a confrontation with a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial. The Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that a judge was correct to shut down the case.
That suit involved no allegations of personal misconduct by Warren or Haaland, but Justice Department attorneys also pointed to a 2006 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that accepted arguments from lawyers for former Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.) that a press interview he gave about his separation from his wife was within the scope of his official duties.
In the exchange, Ballenger said one reason for the separation was that his wife was uncomfortable living across the street from the offices of the Council on American Islamic Relations, which he called “the fundraising arm for Hezbollah.” The group sued Ballenger for slander, but a judge agreed that the congressman was seeking to preserve his official reputation when he addressed the question about his marriage.
Carroll claimed in a book and in interviews last year that in 1995 or 1996 she ran into Trump at a Bergdorf Goodman store and agreed to help him pick out a gift. Carroll says the pair eventually ended up in a lingerie section dressing room where Trump assaulted and raped her.
Trump issued several denials of Carroll’s story, including a written statement in which he insisted he’d never met her, despite a photo she has of the pair together.
“She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section,” Trump’s statement said. He also denied her account in an exchange with reporters on the White House South Lawn before boarding Marine One and in an Oval Office interview with The Hill newspaper.
Hey, if he wants to kill off a bunch of GOP voters in swing states, I'm having a hard time finding a reason to argue.
Trump in North Carolina on September 8. | Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Trump rallies have become a series of potential superspreader events.
New daily coronavirus cases and deaths were trending upward in North Carolina heading into Labor Day weekend. But you certainly wouldn’t know that by watching President Donald Trump’s rally at Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem on Tuesday.
Trump claimed during his speech that there were 15,000 people there. That was an exaggeration, but Jonah Kaplan of ABC 11 in Raleigh reported that the crowd of several thousand was the largest he’d seen in the state since the beginning of the pandemic.
While the science about coronavirus transmission at large outdoor events remains somewhat unsettled, a crowd of this size assembling during a pandemic would be risky no matter what. But making matters worse was the fact that attendees weren’t distancing from one another. Very few people wore masks, violating the state’s mask requirement.
Hello from Winston-Salem, NC where hundreds await @realDonaldTrump at an outdoor rally. Attendees have their temperature checked as they arrive, & signs encourage mask-wearing. I’d say ~10% are wearing masks. No distancing to speak of. Outdoor events in NC are capped at 50 people pic.twitter.com/zKKMQa61v4
Outdoor events in North Carolina are supposed to be capped at 50 people. Trump, however, made a mockery of Gov. Roy Cooper (D) in particular and public health guidelines in general.
“We call you peaceful protesters. You know why?” he told his audience. “Because they have rules in these Democrat-run states that if you campaign you can’t have more than five people. They did that for me.”
Trump: "We call you peaceful protesters. You know why? Because they have rules in these Democrat-run states that if you campaign you can't have more than 5 people. They did that for me." pic.twitter.com/Nr7JBL6re4
Unsurprisingly, the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t a major focus of Trump’s speech. Instead, he lied about the economy, claiming “we’ve never had so many jobs” when in fact there are fewer jobs in the country right now than when he took office; whined about how the media treats him (“You know, they used to say Abraham Lincoln got the worst press. I said, there’s no way he got worse than me.”), and mispronounced Kamala Harris’s name while repeating it over and over like some sort of incantation.
But when he did talk about the pandemic that has now claimed almost 190,000 American lives — including nearly 3,000 in North Carolina — Trump made clear that his thinking hasn’t really evolved since last February and March, when he ignored warnings from public health experts and repeatedly insisted the pandemic would go away on its own.
Trump is trying to construct an alternate reality where the coronavirus is little more than a historical footnote
New daily coronavirus cases in the US are currently hovering around 40,000. Daily deaths are slowly trending downward from their second-wave peak in early August but have still been over 1,000 three days already this month.
In short, the coronavirus isn’t anywhere near under control. Yet on Tuesday, Trump described the pandemic as all but over and called on all governors to immediately reopen their economies and schools to start in-person instruction.
“Your state should be open,” Trump said to wild cheers. “Even if you look statistically — it’s you, it’s Michigan, it’s a couple of others ... they wanna open. They wanna have football. They wanna have their schools open. And it’s a shame what’s going on.”
Trump went on to characterize public health measures that officials are using to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus as a political conspiracy against him.
“I’ll tell you what — on November 4, every one of those states will be open,” Trump said. “They’re doing it for political reasons. They think that by hurting the economy, by keeping all these store owners and all these people that work in shops and stores and buildings and offices, they think by keeping them and hurting them, they’re hurting the economy.”
Even with coronavirus cases rising in a number of states, Trump calls for all Democratic governors to fully reopen their schools and economies. He also suggests public health measures are part of a political conspiracy against him. pic.twitter.com/asXJa1qjsQ
In reality, what’s hurting the economy is the combination of the pandemic and the inability or unwillingness of politicians like Trump to get it under control. And it’s possible the rally in North Carolina — which was at least the fourth event in recent weeks that Trump held in front of a packed audience without social distancing and with very few masks — will end up doing harm as well.
The Winston-Salem rally came just hours after the release of a study by the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies at San Diego State University that found that last month’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally not only could have infected hundreds of thousands of people with the virus, but will potentially involve more than $12 billion in health care costs. Trump’s latest rally in North Carolina wasn’t nearly as large as Sturgis, but if even a few of the people in attendance were infected with the virus, they could have spread it to others who will then take it back to their communities, possibly seeding future outbreaks.
Trump should know better
The recent batch of Trump rallies were the first since June 20, when he held one at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that ended up being a disaster. The Trump campaign’s decision to ignore warnings from public health experts likely fueled a spike in coronavirus cases in the area.
“In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots,” Tulsa City/County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said days after the rally, according to the Associated Press.
Herman Cain, a prominent Trump supporter who was photographed at the rally without a mask, contracted Covid-19 after the rally and died. Though Cain’s travel schedule makes it impossible to know exactly where and when he became infected, the rally was symptomatic of the broader problem. Instead of doing everything possible to keep people safe, Trump campaign workers were filmed removing thousands of “Do Not Sit Here, Please!” stickers meant to encourage rallygoers to social distance.
On June 20, 32,025 new coronavirus cases were reported in the country. On September 6, 31,061 were reported. In short, the state of the pandemic is basically unimproved — and things could get worse in the weeks to come as schools reopen.
What has changed, however, is the proximity to November’s election. Trump has clearly calculated that in crucial states like North Carolina, his best strategy is to declare mission accomplished when it comes to the coronavirus and hope his supporters continue to buy what he’s selling.
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The Facebook page of Ben Shapiro, the conservative personality who runs the Daily Wire, frequently makes the top ten list shared by Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for the New York Times. | Jessica Pons/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Untangling the influence of right-wing media is hard, especially with limited data.
A few years ago, New York Times columnist Kevin Roose decided he wanted to get a better look at what was happening on Facebook. Because Facebook does not offer much data about activity on its platform, Roose turned to a Facebook-owned tool called CrowdTangle, which lets journalists and researchers see which public posts are getting the highest levels of engagement. It seemed revealing at first glance.
“I started collecting this data without any kind of agenda. I was just fascinated by it personally,” Roose told Recode. “I was fascinated by how different the world that I was seeing on Twitter was from the one that the data showed was happening on Facebook.”
There, he says he discovered what he calls a “parallel media universe” where extreme right-wing pages reign supreme. Consistently, Roose found, conservative pages were beating out liberals’ in making it into the day’s top 10 Facebook posts with links in the United States, based on engagement, like the number of reactions, comments, and shares the posts receive. That seems to provide evidence against the notion that Facebook censors conservatives, a complaint often trotted out by Republicans despite lacking any significant data to support their claims of systemic bias. In fact, these numbers would make it seem that Facebook is almost entirely dominated by conservative voices. But the problem is, we don’t actually know if this is the case because engagement with public posts only measures one part of what users do on Facebook’s platform and can’t really reveal the extent of conservative influence there.
Critics have insisted that Roose’s numbers can’t tell the whole story. In late July, the head of Facebook’s News Feed, John Hegeman, chimed in, emphasizing that “these lists don’t represent what most people see” on Facebook, pointing to non-public data showing that the list of what’s most seen on Facebook tells a less-partisan tale, with outlets like the Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed capturing high amounts of attention. This prompted several journalists to ask why Facebook won’t just make the type of data Hegeman cited publicly available.
Meanwhile, Roose has doubled down on his analysis of what gets the most engagement on Facebook. In July, he created a standalone Twitter account, called Facebook’s Top 10, devoted to these calculations, which now has over 16,000 followers (and copy-cat accounts that do the same roundup for posts in Italy and in Sweden). While acknowledging its limitations, he’s floated that the engagement data can indicate what’s really “a rough gauge of what’s grabbing America’s attention” and serve as a “useful reality check for Democrats.” Essentially, Roose thinks this Facebook activity might be the “silent majority” that’s more supportive of Trump than liberals would like.
There’s now a running debate among academics, analytics experts, and observers like Roose around what we know about what’s happening on Facebook and why. Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan recently argued that “Likes,” comments, and shares are just a small part of what people actually see on Facebook, and that it’s difficult to draw conclusions from these interactions alone or to know what they might mean for an election. Meanwhile, CrowdTangle co-founder and chief executive Brandon Silverman conceded that there are limits to the data his tool provides, but he argues that it’s still helpful for understanding how public pages behave.
So, now weeks before a pivotal presidential election, everyone is arguing about what’s happening on Facebook and what it means. Everyone seems to agree that focusing on the available engagement data has some serious limitations and that we need more data to understand the goings-on of the most politically significant social media network in the United States, if not the world. Trouble is, we don’t have any idea when, or if, Facebook will lift that curtain.
On Facebook, engagement is just one part of the story
Lots of stuff happens on Facebook, but what’s publicly available is not a perfect representative slice of the platform overall. Again, what CrowdTangle measures — and what Roose’s Top 10 lists catalog — is engagement with public posts on Facebook. But your interactions in the public spaces of Facebook represent a small chunk of what you do on the platform. Many posts, messages, groups, and pages are private, so what you do there doesn’t get captured by CrowdTangle.
Roose says that he tries to focus his research by looking at US-based posts that include links from pages. That excludes, for instance, posts that are just status updates or posts that just include an image. With these search constraints in place, Roose says he’s finding a regular pattern of public right-wing pages capturing many more interactions than their left-leaning counterparts.
The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:
1. Franklin Graham 2. Donald Trump 2020 Voters 3. Ben Shapiro 4. Ben Shapiro 5. David J. Harris Jr. 6. Fox News 7. Sarah Palin 8. Ben Shapiro 9. An0maly 10. Robert Reich
If you’re a liberal, it might worry you that, according to this metric, posts from pages belonging to Diamond and Silk or Ben Shapiro are regularly outperforming more progressive content like, say, the page belonging to Occupy Democrats. That counts posts like Ben Shapiro commenting on Nancy Pelosi’s recent hair salon visit (and linking to a Daily Wire article about it). What doesn’t get counted, as an example, is your friend posting “Vote for Joe Biden!” as a status only available for view by friends.
But again, the CrowdTangle engagement data doesn’t take into account much of what people do on Facebook. According to Aviv Ovadya, the founder of the Thoughtful Technology Project, CrowdTangle can be useful for understanding what public Facebook is up to, but there’s much more to Facebook than that. “There are better ways of getting at what the entire set of Facebook users are interacting with,” said Ovadya, pointing to Facebook data from another firm called NewsWhip.
The engagement that CrowdTangle measures involves users making a certain type of effort. Engaging with content on Facebook is not the same thing as seeing it or agreeing with it. It’s also something that not everybody does. Consider how often you actually take the step to “Like,” comment on, or share content from a public page instead of just passively scrolling through your News Feed. Different people also engage in different ways.
“Lots of people use Facebook five minutes a day or 20 minutes a week,” said Nyhan, the Dartmouth professor. “There’s some people on Facebook eight or 10 hours a day. So you can get huge engagement numbers catering to that deeply devoted base of hyper-engaged Facebook users.”
Screenshot from Facebook
A highly engaged post from Ben Shapiro included a picture of Nancy Pelosi and a link to a Daily Wire story about the opening of some gyms in government buildings.
And then there’s the hate-like and the hate-share. This is what happens when someone engages with a post from a page but doesn’t necessarily support what the post says.
“Reactions are both positive and negative,” said Kathy Qian, a data scientist currently working with Code for Democracy. “Without directionality to the ranking of reactions, it’s hard to know if people are reacting positively because they agree or they’re hate-commenting or hate-angry-facing, basically.”
The fact that engagement data can be so misleading is why people like Hegeman, the Facebook News Feed boss, have suggested that a better mechanism for tracking activity on Facebook might be measuring reach: how many people actually see a particular post, link, or publisher. But even though the company has argued that reach data offers a more complete picture of what’s popular, Facebook seems shy about publicly sharing that information on a regular basis.
“I would give my left arm to track reach on Facebook,” Roose told Recode, conceding there’s a lot that CrowdTangle doesn’t capture. “If Facebook would like us to be tracking something other than interactions on public pages, groups, and verified profiles, it has a very easy way of making that possible, and it just hasn’t done it so far.”
Of course, data about engagement on Facebook isn’t useless. It does reflect what kinds of posts people are willing to devote effort to responding to, and it’s also one of the factors that influences recommendations throughout the Facebook platform.
But putting too much stock into the type of engagement data Roose has been sharing raises questions about how Facebook handles content posted by conservatives. Censorship on social media has been a hot-button issue for conservatives since at least 2016, when Gizmodo reported that some Facebook employees suppressed conservative voices in Facebook’s trending news section, which the company later removed from the site. Despite the protestations of certain Republican lawmakers, there’s no strong, empirical evidence that Facebook is systematically biased against conservatives. In some cases, the company has directly intervened to help right-wing voices. And again, the high levels of engagement on right-leaning Facebook pages would seem to suggest that conservative content is more popular than ever.
Still, high levels of engagement on Facebook is not quite proof that there’s a silent majority capable of swinging the election one way or the other. It might be more accurate to say that this heightened activity suggests that conservatives have found more concentrated and highly engaged audiences than liberals have with these kinds of posts.
“There is a thriving pages ecosystem on Facebook, where highly emotive content performs well,” Nyhan explained, “and many conservative publishers appear at the top of the highest-performing pages and URLs for generating engagement.” He emphasized that what people do on Facebook also doesn’t necessarily correlate with what they do in the voting booth.
Different data tells different stories about Facebook. More data could help.
One of the challenges in studying what’s politically going on for Facebook’s users is that different users use Facebook differently, and it’s very easy to end up essentially comparing digital apples to digital oranges.
When people do stuff on Facebook, they do it differently for different types of content. Silverman, the CrowdTangle chief, points out that people are more likely to interact with political content without actually clicking through to read it, while the exact reverse is true of celebrity gossip reports. Looking at the most-engaged public posts of all types of Facebook content — not just links but also photos, videos, and so on — reveals a snapshot of what’s popular on Facebook that’s somewhat different from what Roose is broadcasting, Silverman says.
If you look at data beyond the engagement on posts from public pages, the story of what’s popular on Facebook looks a bit different. NewsWhip, a social media analytics firm, calculates the most popular publications on Facebook by looking at reactions, shares, and comments to links that are shared not only publicly on the social network but also privately. Monthly rankings from NewsWhip show a mix of ideological leaning in outlets whose content is performing well on Facebook.
Of course, what the New York Times is trying to accomplish on Facebook might differ from the objectives of Fox News. Some of these actors, such as the Daily Wire, have their content boosted through systematic, coordinated networks, which might explain that site’s recent climb to huge levels of engagement. Whether conservatives appear to be getting more engagement overall, however, is up for debate. As the NewsWhip data showing engagement data from both public and private pages reveals, total engagement on Facebook is a bit more balanced than what Roose’s top 10 lists suggest.
But as those lists reveal, there is evidence of a trend in which certain kinds of conservative content — mostly emotion-driven, deeply partisan posts — attract large levels of engagement. NewsWhip on Tuesday reported that the most-engaged articles on Facebook in the past 24 hours included a slew of conservative media articles.
“Anger travels really, really well on Facebook,” Roose told Recode. “I think the commentators that have sort of excelled at packaging grievances and presenting them to people in an attractive way have really gotten a lot of mileage.” Noting he doesn’t have supporting data, he hypothesizes that liberals, generally, trust a more fragmented set of sources of media than conservatives, which could contribute to why right-wing success makes it to the top of his list.
Facebook, for its part, did not comment on why conservative pages do well by this metric.
Facebook is important, even if we don’t know how the platform matters
Even if we were able to understand the full extent of activity on Facebook, the link between behavior on the platform and real-life political behavior isn’t clear. That’s not to say other mechanisms, like polls, are perfect at indicating voting behavior either, but the actual role of Facebook in political discourse is still difficult to truly understand.
That’s probably why Facebook announced in late August that it would bring on social scientists, including Nyhan, to help study the influence of Facebook’s systems on American democracy. But for those hoping to understand the platform in real time — or at least before the election — that won’t be so satisfying. For those watching Facebook’s own CrowdTangle data in the meantime, don’t get your hopes up.
“There’s a lot of other data points we’d also love to add,” CrowdTangle’s Silverman told Recode. “And those are all conversations that are constantly happening for us internally.” But it wasn’t clear when, how, and if that would happen.
In the meantime, Roose insists that media outlets keep their eyes glued to the biggest social media platform and work with the data they do have. “I think people feel like I’m trying to prove a point by doing this, like I’m making an argument for this data,” he says. “I guess the argument that I feel like I’m making is that people should pay attention to what’s happening on Facebook.”
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On March 23, in Rochester, New York, a naked and unarmed 41-year-old Black man named Daniel Prude died while being detained by Rochester Police Department officers. RPD officers Mark Vaughn, Troy Taladay, and Francisco Santiago were responding to calls from Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, that Daniel was having some kind of “mental health crisis.” On Sept. 2, almost six months after Daniel died, body camera video was finally released to the public, and it told a very disturbing story. The video showed police arresting a naked Prude, putting a bag over his head, mocking him, and then putting their weight on him, pressing him to the floor, as Prude gasped his final breaths.
Prude was declared braindead upon arrival at a local hospital and died on March 30, after he was taken off of life support by his family. On Tuesday, following days of protests, Police Chief La'Ron Singletary retired, along with Deputy Chief Joe Morabito and Commander Fabian Rivera. Deputy Chief Mark Simmons and Commander Henry Favor reportedly were demoted to their previous ranks as lieutenants. Singletary was a 20-year veteran while Morabito had been with the RPD for 34 years. Mayor Lovely Warren made the announcement during a virtual town hall meeting Singletary was scheduled to show up at, but did not. “The chief has felt that his career and his integrity has been challenged,” Warren said during the announcement.
In a statement, Singletary said, “As a man of integrity, I will not sit idly by while outside entities attempt to destroy my character. The events over the past week are an attempt to destroy my character and integrity." Singletary went on to blame a “mischaracterization and the politicization of the actions that I took after being informed of Mr. Prude's death,” saying what was being said was “not based on facts, and is not what I stand for."
Warren said she had not asked for the police chief’s resignation. News outlets pointed to Mayor Warren’s statement last week that "l have addressed with Police Chief La'Ron Singletary how deeply disappointed I am in him personally and professionally for failing to fully and accurately inform me about what occurred to Mr. Prude. He knows he needs to do better to truly protect and serve our community and I know he will."
Last week, Warren suspended seven officers involved with the arrest, as state Attorney General Letitia James said she would be forming a grand jury to investigate this nine-month-old case. On Tuesday, Warren told reporters that she expected more resignations.
Singletary may be correct that the public doesn’t have the full story regarding the corruption of the law enforcement apparatus and judicial process in Rochester, New York, especially in regard to Black people and their human rights. But the idea that his made-up sense of integrity and character shouldn’t be impugned after he sat silently for months, seemingly handing out zero punishments to his officers or information to the Prude family when it came to this citizen’s inhumane treatment and death, is only laughable if that will hurt his feelings.
At the same time, the Prude family is suing the city of Rochester, now-former police chief Singletary, as well as Simmons, Favor, Vaughn, Taladay, and Santiago, as well as other law enforcement officials and officers involved in Daniel Prude’s death. The family is asking a federal court to make the Rochester Police Department reform its process for investigating incidents in which officers use force.
This will be a fascinating issue. It's not a technical limitation of the hardware, it's just software-enforced lower performance. That's going to be hard for courts to be excited about.
As recently highlighted by a Tesla Model 3 owner on Reddit, your connected car knows when you've hacked it, and it might be logging that data to use against you in a future warranty claim. The Drive reports: The image you see above is a warning message popped up on the man's Model 3 infotainment screen after he installed the latest over-the-air OS update from Tesla a couple weeks ago. Prior to the update, he had also added an aftermarket module from an outfit called Ingenext that allows the dual-motor Model 3 to achieve its quickest 0-60 mph time without Tesla's requisite $2,000 "Acceleration Boost" option. Its presence didn't trigger a warning prior to the software update, and though the car still drove normally, the owner couldn't get the display to clear. Ingenext is a Canadian company focused on activating the latent performance and comfort features baked-in to Tesla vehicles. One particular modification developed by the company is called "Boost 50," a $1,458 upgrade which claims to shave up to a half-second off the zero-to-60 MPH time when installed in a Model 3 equipped with dual motors but not the performance option.
[...]
Ingenext's founder Guillaume Andre told The Drive that he feared Tesla could use the detection of aftermarket parts to justify blocking vehicles from using the Supercharger network and make customers "a prisoner of the Tesla system". The owner of the Model 3 that began getting the pop-ups told us that he planned to visit a Tesla Supercharger to ensure normal functionality, but has not yet reported the results of his findings. [...] Ingenext got to working on finding just how Tesla detected its "undetectable" mod. After some prodding, it was determined that the vehicle had used a separate communications network to detect the presence of the module and ultimately determined that a second small hardware module could be installed to combat the detection. Ingenext dubbed its fix the "Nice Try Module" and has already begun shipping it to customers.
The Tesla community is torn on this matter. Some argue that owners who purchased the module knew the risk of not going through the official channels, akin to using a cheat code to unlock a DLC upgrade in a video game. Others bring up the very valid point of right to repair -- but does that also include right to modify? After all, you do own the vehicles you spent upwards of $40,000 on. Nearly every enthusiast-focused vehicle has an off-the-shelf tune of some sort that can be purchased. Ingenext says that this is only the beginning of a fight that it anticipates will be an uphill battle, if not for it, than for all aftermarket companies who develop performance mods for Teslas.
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf speaks during a press conference on July 21, 2020, in Washington, DC. His alleged misdeeds are cited in whistleblower Brian Murphy’s complaint. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
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Joe Prude, the brother of Daniel Prude, looks out into the crowd as he holds his wife, Valerie, at a march for his brother on September 7 in Rochester, New York. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street on September 8, 2020, in London. | Leon Neal/Getty Images
People stop to take morning pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge covered in smoke from wildfires on September 9. | Eric Risberg/AP
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Trump in North Carolina on September 8. | Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The Facebook page of Ben Shapiro, the conservative personality who runs the Daily Wire, frequently makes the top ten list shared by Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for the New York Times. | Jessica Pons/The Washington Post via Getty Images
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Screenshot from Facebook
