Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.
It took Donald Trump just four years to pivot from vowing to make America great again to defending the Confederacy, but he appears to have chosen that fight even as public opinion has shifted dramatically toward the Black Lives Matter movement. But, inspired by veteran propagandist John Solomon and Sen. Ted Cruz, we think a bit of political jiu-jitsu might bring Trump and his cultists to the Union side.
"Racist Democrats" might just do the trick!
Racism obviously transcends partisanship, geography and ideology. But it has long been the case that white conservatives, especially in the South, have been the staunchest defenders of racist institutions. They fought a Civil War to preserve slavery, rioted in response to the dismantling of Jim Crow and now slap "All Lives Matter" bumper-stickers on their cars, reflexively defend police officers accused of abuse and routinely get fired for going off on bigoted tirades about the Movement for Black Lives.
As you probably know, conservative white people in the South almost uniformly identified as Democrats for several generations leading up to the Civil Rights era, and shifted to the Republican Party in the years after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. For normal people, this is an interesting bit of political history. But Republicans see the Dixiecrats' shameful past as a powerful defense against any current criticism of their overwhelmingly white party, its often offensive rhetoric and consistent opposition to safety net programs which might help those people.
This talking-point creates an opportunity for those of us who care more about dismantling structural racism than scoring partisan points. If we were to stop focusing on the fact that these Confederate monuments celebrate historical figures who committed treason in defense of slavery, and instead called for taking down statues of racist Democrats, perhaps we could achieve a rare moment of unity around the issue.
Just a thought.
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"The State Department inspector general fired by President Donald Trump before he could complete investigations into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his office was looking into five matters of potential wrongdoing at the State Department," according to CNN.
In addition to investigating Pompeo's potential misuse of taxpayer funds and reviewing his decision to expedite an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Steve Linick told lawmakers his office was looking into three other matters that "involved the Office of the Secretary in some way."These three probes, which CNN had not previously reported on, include an audit of Special Immigrant Visas, a review of the International Women of Courage Award and another review "involving individuals in the Office of the Protocol."
The Wall Street Journal also reports that "a senior department official discouraged [Linick] from probing U.S. arms sales to a pair of Gulf states before his ouster last month."
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Robert Kadlec, the official who leads the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) pandemic response, worked as a consultant to Emergent Biosolutions until 2015, according to RollCall. That company was awarded a $628 million contract by HHS last week, and "has received more than $1.2 billion from the division Kadlec oversees" in the three years since he got the job. "The contract raises questions because a whistleblower complaint filed in May by former [senior HHS official] Rick Bright alleges Kadlec and other officials may have broken the law by awarding lucrative contracts to former business acquaintances and friends."
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This seems somewhat related.
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"The Trump administration is preparing to open the door to oil and gas drilling off Florida’s coast — but will wait until after the November election to avoid blowback in a swing state whose waters both parties have long considered sacrosanct," according to Politico.
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He seems nice and we're sure he's totally not a racist.
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WaPo's Catherine Rampell:
The immigration agency admonishing immigrants to pull themselves up by their bootstraps seems to have destroyed its own boots.For three years, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — the federal agency that processes visas, work permits and naturalizations — has lectured immigrants about how they should become more self-sufficient. It has alleged, without evidence, that too many immigrants are on the dole. (Actually, immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in federal benefits, and the foreign-born use fewer federal benefits than do their native-born counterparts.)
The agency implemented a broad, and likely illegal, rule allegedly designed to weed out immigrants who might ever be tempted to become a “public charge” and try to benefit from taxpayer largesse.
Well, now USCIS is broke — and is trying to become a “public charge” itself, by begging Congress for a bailout.
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Speaking of which, "asylum-seeking migrants locked up inside an Arizona Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center with one of the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases say they were forced to clean the facility and are 'begging' for protection from the virus," according to NBC. (We would note that asylum-seekers are not "migrants," and should not be held in detention while awaiting a hearing.)
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The cruelty is the point, but it is also the case that Trump has been losing support among white Evangelicals...
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"The Trump administration plans to reinterpret a Cold War-era arms agreement between 34 nations with the goal of allowing U.S. defense contractors to sell more American-made drones to a wide array of nations," according to Reuters.
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Finally, from the AP: "As Trump blames antifa, protest records show scant evidence."
