Over 1,000 hate crimes have been reported since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, the rate dropping since the days after election day but over a third of them still making reference to Trump. Most of the incidents were against immigrants, followed by African-Americans, Muslims and LGBT people, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center,…
A woman in Louisville, KY caught an ugly confrontation on video Tuesday in which an angry white shopper went on a racist tirade against a pair of Hispanic women who were shopping together.
Facebook user Renee Buckner posted the video Tuesday evening, explaining, "This Hispanic lady was purchasing items and the transaction was almost complete, then her friend brings up some shirts to be added to her purchase instead of getting in line. And this lady went off!!!"
Banned for life: Kentucky mall boots woman who went on racist tirade in viral video
In the video, a senior woman in a blue coat directed a stream of invective against the two women because she believed the second woman had cut in line.
"It starts back there," the woman snarled, pointing to the end of the line. "And it don't bother me if I say it and I don't care if everybody hears me. I think everybody here probably feels the same damn way I do."
"Just go back wherever the f*ck you came from," she said before turning to the cashier. "Hey!" she said. "Tell 'em to go back where they belong. You know, they come here to live and they act like they're everybody else. Get in the back of the line like everybody else does."
"You're a nobody," she went on. "Just because you come from another country, it don't make you nobody! Nobody, as far as I'm concerned. You're probably on welfare, the taxpayers probably paid for all that stuff."
The rant went on and on as the two Hispanic shoppers blithely ignored the woman's foul-mouthed, disgusting outburst.
"Speak English, this is America!" she went on when one of the women addressed the other in Spanish. "If you don't know it, learn it."
Watch the video, embedded below:
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin told CNN on Tuesday night that to stop the epidemic of opiate abuse currently gripping his state, the U.S. must "declare a war on drugs."
In fact, the 45-year-long "War on Drugs" that was begun by Pres. Richard Nixon (R) in 1971 has been a wildly expensive -- and yet wildly ineffective -- boondoggle that has resulted in mass incarcerations and decimated the nation's black communities through what author Michelle Alexander calls "the new Jim Crow" laws.
Manchin was speaking with CNN's Jake Tapper when he made the tone-deaf statement. Tapper asked what President-elect Trump plans to do to halt the explosion of prescription painkiller abuse in this country.
"Well, we need to declare a war on drugs," Manchin said. He touted his experience visiting recovering addicts in rehabilitation facilities and said that addicts "started out as a kid, you know, smoking occasional recreational marijuana and then that led in to prescriptions taken out of their parents' or grandparents' medicine cabinet and become a 'cool kid' and before you know it, it turned into where they just were hooked."
"Heroin comes on," he continued. "Now, we have the fentanyl coming on and it's just been unbelievable."
The so-called "War on Drugs" began in 1971 when Pres. Nixon increased the size of drug enforcement agencies, imposed mandatory sentencing laws -- which are now acknowledged to be racist and unevenly applied across the justice system -- and introduced controversial search and seizure practices like "no-knock" warrants.
The effort has largely been a spectacular failure. The nation has squandered trillions of dollars to no effect. Drug use has not fallen -- it's actually increasing -- and drug pipelines into the country have not slowed down.
However, the United States now boasts the highest percentage of incarcerated citizens in the world. A disproportionate number of those people are nonwhites -- who Alexander and other scholars have concluded are unfairly impacted by mandatory sentencing laws and so-called "broken windows" policing.
A former Nixon aide admitted earlier this year that the "War on Drugs" was actually an operation designed to disenfranchise and incarcerate the two groups Nixon believed to be most hostile to his presidency: black Americans and the youth movement.
Furthermore, Manchin's blame of marijuana use as a "gateway drug" is an oft-cited, but scientifically invalid myth used by anti-pot crusaders.
In fact, pharmaceutical companies ignored warnings and issues with the painkiller OxyContin and spent billions of dollars marketing it in West Virginia and other economically impoverished areas. The drug quickly created a new generation of addicts due to its rapid delivery of a strong dose of opiate painkillers that abruptly ends before the allotted 12 hours that the drug is supposed to last.
Manchin is the father of much-reviled pharmaceutical CEO Heather Bresch who came to national attention this year when her company dramatically jacked up the price of the Epi-Pen, a life-saving rescue medication for allergic reactions.
He is one of the few Democrats currently cozying up to President-elect Donald Trump. Manchin is an opponent of renewable and green energy initiatives due to his state's economic reliance on coal.
Last week he made multiple trips to Trump Tower and was considered by political observers to be in line as Trump's possible Secretary of Energy. That honor ultimately went to ex-Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R).
Manchin has urged his fellow Democrats to get on the Trump train and make nice with the incoming administration.
“My job as a senator is to do everything I can to help him,” Manchin said of Trump on Friday. “And If I do disagree -- respectfully disagree -- I’m not calling people names. I’m not basically trashing their ideas. I might think there’s a better path forward. I’ll do that in a productive manner.”
On Monday, he said on Fox News that Democrats angry about Trump's victory need to "get over it and move on."
Watch the video, embedded below:
CNN's Brianna Keilar interviewed Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa on Tuesday night and wasn't letting him squirm off the hook with regards to Russian hacks of the U.S. election.
Mediaite said that Keilar zeroed in on President-elect Donald Trump's refusal to accept that 14 different intelligence agencies concluded that Russian government operatives attempted to sway the election in Trump's favor.
“You think Donald Trump has not politicized intel?” she asked Issa.
“What you’re saying simply isn’t supported by direct statements," Issa replied.
Keilar persisted, "Donald Trump is asserting that you have no idea if Russia is behind this...How is that not politicizing intelligence and how is that leadership?”
"I don't think the facts line up with what you're asserting," she said.
Issa reluctantly conceded that Russia is "continuing to undermine our process at every possibility," but placed the onus on Pres. Barack Obama to provide proof and to make knowledge available to the U.S. public.
Watch the video, embedded below:
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) issued a bulletin on Tuesday regarding President-elect Donald Trump's choice of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as national security adviser.
In a post at the Hatewatch blog, Stephen Piggott noted that Flynn has been very open about his reactionary views, posting frequently on social media.
"In the approximately 1,700 tweets examined by Hatewatch, Flynn has been no stranger to the anti-Muslim movement. He also has interacted with and praised a number of anti-Muslim figures. But perhaps most surprisingly, Flynn follows two individuals who use the hashtag #WhiteGenocide proudly displayed in their Twitter biographies: @ErinBSullivan and @AlbionAwakes," Piggott wrote.
He continued, "White genocide is an idea that white people, far from ruling most of the developed world, are actually being subjected to a genocide that will ultimately wipe out their race. In recent years, the idea has been spread through something known as the 'The Mantra,' a 221-word attack on multiculturalism written by Robert Whitaker, a cantankerous segregationist making a presidential bid this year on the racist American Freedom Party ticket. The Mantra ends with the phrase, 'Anti-racist is code word for anti-white.'”
Not only does Flynn consort with and approvingly retweet anti-Muslim extremists, he played an active role in spreading the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory that alleged that Hillary Clinton and other Democratic officials are running a "child sex ring" out of basement catacombs situated under a D.C. pizzeria.
Flynn, Piggott said, follows "Pamela Geller, perhaps the most rabid anti-Muslim figure in America. Flynn also follows white nationalist Pat Buchanan, as well as a number of antigovernment accounts such as Alex Jones."
On Tuesday, it came to light that the national security adviser hopeful met with the Nazi-founded Austrian Freedom Party at Trump Tower. The far-right Austrian group has openly aligned itself in recent days with Russian President Vladimir Putin and declared that it has signed a five-year agreement with the Russian dictator.
President-elect Donald Trump's D.C. hotel has been causing some problems for the Donald for awhile now. In October, immediately following the Washington Post's leaked audio tapes of the president-elect bragging about sexually assaulting women, the hotel took a financial hit — and it's about to take another.
The Washingtonian reports that a year-end list of luxury hotels from travel group Luxury Travel Intelligence (LTI), which specializes in high-end hotels, puts Trump's near the bottom of its list.
Rated as the third-worst hotel on the list, LTI's review reads, "The building itself is undoubtedly impressive, but once inside we start to ask questions."
"LTI finds the décor a little garish and more quantity over quality," the review continues.
The hotel was having trouble filling its rooms back in October after the release of Trump's "p*ssy grabbing" comments. At that time, rooms that normally went for $800 per night were listed for as low as $445 per night.
"Service is poor on occasions and lacks confidence," LTI's review continued. "The whole experience seems a little forced, and therefore this place is not for the true discerning luxury traveller."
No matter how harsh the review was, however, LTI remained convinced that Trump could keep the business flowing into his hotel — at least as long as it's around.
Trump's hotel is presently at the center of an ongoing conflict-of-interest battle between the president-elect and the General Services Administration (GSA). The latter has suggested that the hotel will be a direct violation of Trump's lease as soon as he's sworn in.
Democrats are pushing for Trump to be evicted from the hotel, noting in a letter that was published last Wednesday they wish to receive financial and contractual documents regarding the lease.
"The Deputy Commissioner informed our staff that GSA assesses that Mr. Trump will be in breach of the lease agreement the moment he takes office on January 20, 2017, unless he fully divests himself of all financial interests in the lease for the Washington D.C. hotel," the letter read.
"The Deputy Commissioner made clear that Mr. Trump must divest himself not only of managerial control, but of all ownership interest as well," it said. Signers included Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, Peter DeFazio of Oregon, Gerald Connolly of Virginia and Andre Carson of Indiana.
Even so, whether the hotel is lavish, overdone, or a conflict of interest, the LTI is convinced that it will at least remain a success, namely because "the tourist hordes will keep the place eternally busy."
Former Bill Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich joined Amy Goodman on Tuesday morning's Democracy Now! where Reich warned of where the country is headed under President-elect Donald Trump just one month out from his inauguration.
Donald Trump has advocated and normalized hateful behaviors of American people, Reich explained, both on and off the campaign trail. "He also does not have any understanding of a democracy," Reich said.
"If anything, his leanings are toward tyranny, and by tyranny I simply mean someone who absorbs the trappings of power but doesn't understand that he, in a democracy, is a public servant," Reich continued. "He is working for us, we are not working for him."
"In many ways Donald Trump seems to be indifferent, at best, to the democratic process," he said.
Goodman and Reich spoke to the ways that Trump has targeted the media, namely referring back to recent a post of Reich's about the ways tyrants aim to crumble democracy by delegitimizing and taking power away from the free press.
Reich listed the seven techniques that Trump has already employed to do so, which include the following:
Reich spoke to each one on the segment. You can watch his full remarks below.
(H/t Mediaite)
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) CEO Damon Hininger said this week that he expects profits to soar under the new president's immigration policy.
Although CCA's stock dipped over the summer after the Justice Department announced plans to phase out the use of private prisons, Donald Trump's win caused the company's share price to skyrocket 43 percent on election day alone.
In a Tuesday interview with CNBC, Hininger said that CCA, which recently began rebranding itself as CoreCivic, saw a several opportunities in the first year of Trump's presidency, including a need for increased detention capacity for the housing of undocumented immigrants.
"You guys profit if there's more people in jail," CNBC host Brian Sullivan noted. "And that's not a way any company should be run. You have contracts and limits that say, well, you need to have 90 percent occupancy in a prison."
Hininger argued that Sullivan's charge was "baloney" because the company encourages inmates not to re-offend by offering education and vocational programs.
"We're providing a great service!" the CEO insisted. "We're making sure these individuals once they're released, they can support themselves and their family and not come back into the criminal justice system. That's great value to the government."
Hininger said that the company could "look forward to" a number of favorable circumstances in the next year under the new president.
"First of all, there's immigration," he explained. "If there is a need for more detention capacity on the border, we can provide that solution or if there's a unique population that we need to help serve with ICE."
Additionally, Hininger sees an upside in Trump's promise to rebuild infrastructure, which he believes can be provided by the private prison industry.
"A lot of discussion with the Trump administration about criminal justice reform," he promised.
Watch the video below from CNBC, broadcast Dec. 20, 2016.
A group of Democratic senators took their plans to tackle rising drug costs to President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday, asking him to work with them and Republicans on the issue.
In a letter dated Tuesday, the 19 senators named five areas for cooperation: allowing the Medicare program to negotiate prescription prices, increasing transparency, stopping abusive pricing, passing reform on incentives for innovation and supporting generic competition for branded drugs.
Trump's focus during the presidential election campaign was not on drug prices but on his promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare, President Barack Obama's signature health reform law passed by Democrats in 2010.
But he did talk about allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which is currently prohibited by law, and importing cheaper drugs from other countries. Since elected, Trump promised in an interview with Time magazine that "I'm going to bring down drug prices" but did not say how.
In the letter led by Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Al Franken of Minnesota and co-signed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren among others, the group suggested that there would be opportunities in Congress for Trump to steer bipartisan reform.
It suggested that the Prescription Drug, Generic Drug, and Biosimilars User Fee Agreement reauthorization, due to be passed in the spring, and "other health-related legislative priorities" would be good opportunities.
Republicans have a majority in Congress and is working on a two-part plan to "repeal and replace" Obamacare, according to Republican senators. The repeal would take place through the budget reconciliation process, which can pass with 51 votes. For replacement legislation, some Republican senators have said they may seek Democratic support in order to have bipartisan legislation with 60 votes.
(Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
California defense attorney E. Randal Schoenberg, who successfully sued to have a search warrant for Hillary Clinton's emails released, said on Tuesday that the order did not meet the standard of probable cause.
The warrant which was unsealed on Tuesday suggests that federal magistrate Kevin Fox in Manhattan granted the Oct. 30 warrant to search Anthony Weiner's laptop "based exclusively on the FBI's contention" that it may have contained classified emails exchanged between Clinton and Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, according to Politico.
Schoenberg wrote on Facebook that he was "appalled" after seeing the warrant because the FBI had presented "nothing at all" that amounted to probable cause.
"You will have to ask Judge Fox, or the agent in charge (whose name has been redacted), or Director Comey, why they thought they might find evidence of a crime, why they felt it necessary to inform Congress, and why they even sought this search warrant," Schoenberg said.
Read the warrant below via LawNewz.
Warrant —Clinton by LawNewz on Scribd
A mental evaluation was ordered this week for a New York suspect who was accused of killing a UPS driver but later insisted that he had "purposefully" murdered Donald Trump.
Justin R. Barkley, 38, was expected to plead guilty when he appeared in an Ithaca court on Monday, but Judge John Rowley refused to accept the plea, citing the man's mental state, the Ithaca Voice reported.
"I shot and killed Donald Trump purposely, intentionally and very proudly," Barkley revealed at the hearing.
According to Ithaca police, Barkley shot and killed 52-year-old William Schumacher outside a Walmart on Dec. 8. Police said Barkley later admitted to the killing and to firing a "sound shot" at officers.
Upon being told in court on Monday that he had killed Schumacher, Barkley replied, "I would hope not."
Judge Rowley asked the defendant if he would be willing to concede that he had mistakenly shot someone other than Trump, but Barkley refused.
"I would not agree to that your honor," Barkley insisted.
Defense attorney James Baker argued that his client should be allowed to plead guilty without acknowledging the identity of who he killed. But Rowley declined to accept the plea and a mental evaluation was ordered by Assistant District Attorney Eliza Filipowski.
Barkley is scheduled to appear in court again on Jan. 6.
Former covert CIA agent J.C. Carleson has predicted that President-elect Donald Trump's disdain for intelligence collected by the the agency will mean that foreign assets eventually refuse to help the United States.
In a column for Fortune this week, the spy-turned-author reacts to reports that Trump is refusing to participate in daily intelligence briefings, which she concedes are not as exciting as "Breitbart headlines" that "create lurid stories out of thin air."
"I fear that Trump’s rejection of both the content and the conclusions offered to him by the intelligence community will have a profound chilling effect on the recruitment of new assets, and the willingness of existing assets to continue to provide information," Carleson writes. "Because, why should someone risk his or her life to provide sensitive information that the world now knows will go unread in our highest office?"
According to the former CIA official, Trump's disregard for human intelligence has "consequences beyond Trump’s own dearth of information, because once again, it serves to erode the motivation of those who might provide us with information we desperately need—information that may include details of threats to American lives and infrastructure, for example."
"The world knows that, in the incoming administration, facts will be ignored, and reasoned analysis will be rejected," she writes. "On an individual level, the why determines the what, and without the motivation of knowing that their sacrifices will ultimately make a difference, CIA sources may choose, in Trump’s parlance, to walk away from the deal."
On Monday night, lawyers filed details of President-elect Donald Trump's $25 million settlement that he agreed to in November as a resolve for three pending lawsuits concerning Trump University, Politico reports.
The settlement was submitted to a federal court in San Diego and indicates that the president-elect will personally see that the $25 million is disbursed to the plaintiffs' lawyers by Jan. 18, 2016, according to the Hill.
Trump's lawyers and the plaintiffs' lawyers filed a joint statement urging U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel to approve of the settlement. "By any metric, this is a fair, adequate, and reasonable settlement," the attorneys wrote.
The deal would offer a refund of up to 50 percent of the fees that participants had to pay to the University for a three-day seminar. The initial lawsuit against Trump alleged that the program was not as advertised.
For instance, while the for-profit real estate seminar claimed that Trump hand-picked instructors, he later admitted that he was not involved in their hiring and did not actually know them personally.
Trump's attorneys continue to deny any fraudulent activity, and both Trump and the University deny any wrongdoing in their proposed settlement.
"While Plaintiffs are confident in the strength of their class claims, Defendants were confident in their defense," attorneys for both sides wrote. "Plaintiffs acknowledge the risk that they would be unable to obtain a jury verdict against Defendants, and TU’s financial condition meant collecting any judgment against it would be difficult."
Individuals enrolled in the program spent, on average, $1,500 for the three-day seminar or up to $35,000 to participate in a mentorship program. At least $4 million of the total $25 million settlement will be set aside for a settlement in a separate lawsuit that New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman brought forth against Trump, according to the report.
Thirteen others who claim to also be class members opted out of the initial case but said they could still bring separate lawsuits on their own.
See the court documents here.
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