On Thursday, The Washington Postreported that Democratic senators are calling on President Donald Trump to impose a new round of sanctions on Russia following reports of a new scheme to undermine the 2020 presidential election.
“Congress has mandated a broad range of sanctions tools, and it is long past time for the administration to send a direct message to President [Vladimir] Putin: the U.S. will respond immediately and forcefully to continuing election interference,” said the letter, written by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
New reporting suggests that Russian trolls have been amplifying false claims that Joe Biden is exhibiting signs of dementia — often taking clips of him suppressing his childhood stutter out of context to create the impression of cognitive decline. The Department of Homeland Security recently suppressed a report warning about the troll operation, leading to fears the administration is uninterested in preventing the spread of foreign disinformation.
The Trump campaign's apparent willingness to accept help from Russian operatives in the 2016 election led to over two years of investigation by the FBI and the Office of Special Counsel, which the president and his allies baselessly decried as a "witch hunt" designed to ruin him politically.
Attorney General Bill Barr defended President Donald Trump urging supporters to illegally vote twice in North Carolina even as a top Democratic lawyer argued that his comments constituted a "felony."
Trump traveled to North Carolina on Wednesday, where he told supporters to test the voting system by casting a mail ballot and then voting in person on Election Day, which The New York Times noted is an "act that constitutes the kind of voter fraud the president has railed against."
"They are going to have to check their vote by going to the poll and voting that way because if it tabulates, then they won't be able to do that," Trump said. "So let them send it in, and let them go vote. And if their system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they will be able to vote. So that's the way it is, and that's what they should do."
Trump said he was "not happy" about the expansion of mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic despite copious evidence that it is secure.
"At the same time, we're in court with a lot of it. We're going to see if it can be stopped," he said. "But send your ballots, send them in strong, whether it's solicited or unsolicited. The absentees are fine. But go to vote and if they haven't counted it, you can vote. That's the way I view it."
Marc Elias, a top Democratic Party lawyer who frequently argues high-profile elections cases in court, said that "the president just committed a felony" by telling people to violate election laws.
North Carolina election law says that it is illegal for "any person with intent to commit a fraud to register or vote at more than one precinct or more than one time, or to induce another to do so, in the same primary or election, or to vote illegally at any primary or election."
"The president is urging you to commit a felony—one for which you, though not he, could actually get prosecuted," warned attorney Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Be careful whom you listen to for advice about how to conduct yourself during this election."
Barr tried to defend Trump's comments in an interview with CNN minutes later.
"Well, I don't know exactly what he was saying," Barr said. "But it seems to me what he's saying is he's trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good and if it was so good, if you tried to vote a second time, you would be caught if you voted in-person."
"That would be illegal if somebody mailed in a ballot and then actually showed up to vote in person. That would be illegal," anchor Wolf Blitzer replied.
"I don't know what the law in the particular state says," Barr claimed.
"Is there any state that says you can vote twice?" Blitzer pressed.
"There are some that maybe you can change your vote up to a particular term," Barr replied. "Why are you asking me what he's saying?"
"Wait, the AG isn't sure that voting twice is illegal?" Elias questioned. "That he needs to check state law?"
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein warned voters that trying to cast two ballots is absolutely illegal.
"Today, President Trump outrageously encouraged NCians to break the law in order to help him sow chaos in our election," Stein tweeted. "Make sure you vote, but do NOT vote twice!"
Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections, told the Times that the system would prevent a person from voting twice because only their first vote would be recorded while the second vote would be thrown out.
"Intentional willful double voting is a felony," he added.
Barr claimed that mail voting "is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous, and people are playing with fire."
Pressed on his claims by Blitzer, Barr acknowledged he was basing his claim on "logic" but not "evidence."
"I don't have any information because this is the first time we've tried such a thing," Barr said.
"I will point out there are five states that only have mail-in voting including Utah and Colorado, Washington state," Blitzer replied.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has dismissed the Trump administration's claims as a "political calculation," arguing that mail voting is "more secure" than in-person electronic voting.
"I don't know of any evidence that voting by mail would increase voter fraud," he said, adding that nearly every voter in his state casts ballots by mail.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused Trump of "trying to delegitimize" the election results by sowing doubt in mail voting.
"The way to overcome this is to vote. Vote, vote, vote. And there's not a shred of evidence, not a shred of evidence that mail-in voting is fraudulent," Biden said on Wednesday. "Not a shred."
Far-right white evangelicals have been a major part of President Donald Trump's MAGA base, and he has been great at parroting their view of the world — including their disdain for abortion. But writer Daniel Silliman, in a September 1 article for Christianity Today, reports that some anti-abortion Christians are conflicted about Trump. Others are flat-out refusing to support his reelection campaign.
One abortion opponent who has openly come out against Trump is Stephanie Ranade Krider, former executive director of Ohio Right to Life. Krider, Silliman notes, resigned from that anti-abortion group on June 30 rather than support Trump’s reelection campaign.
Krider, an evangelical who had been with Ohio Right to Life since 2009, told Christianity Today, “You learn to hold certain things in tension, and for me, it came to a point where I couldn’t anymore. I’ve been grateful for the things Trump has accomplished and skeptical of his pro-life views. Always, there has been this undercurrent where he just does not respect women and he does not like black and brown people. I can’t look at any of his behavior and see evidence of the Holy Spirit in his life.”
And Krider, Silliman explains, is not alone in that regard — there are other anti-abortion activists who maintain their opposition to abortion but cannot bring themselves to support Trump this year no matter how much he claims to support their cause.
In the Washington Post, reporter Pam Kelly recently reported on abortion opponents who feel conflicted about Trump. One is Gia Capriotti, a Catholic who dislikes Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s pro-choice views but can’t stand Trump. Capriotti, who voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016, told the Post she considers Trump “brash, arrogant, self-centered” as well as “reckless.”
Read the rest of Silliman’s Christianity Today article here.
Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin has concluded that it isn't just the president who needs to go, it's all of his Republican enablers.
Rubin specifically cited Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who possesses a number of "disqualifying characteristics" like being a "congenital lying, racism, constitutional illiteracy, [and] conspiracy-mongering."
"Ernst used to be considered a middle-of-the-road Republican — before she exonerated Trump for plainly impeachable conduct," Rubin wrote. "Now, she sounds just like him. Iowa Starting Line reports that Ernst now seems to embrace 'a thoroughly-discredited QAnon conspiracy theory about U.S. deaths from COVID-19 being a mere fraction of what has been reported.'"
Ernst thinks that doctors are falsifying COVID-19 data.
"They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19,” Ernst said, without sourcing any possible proof for her conspiracy theory. “I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.”
The QAnon conspiracy theory mischaracterizes the understandings about the virus. It's similar to AIDS where people don't typically die of AIDS, they die from AIDS-related illnesses because the disease takes down your immune system. Since COVID-19 impacts someone's lungs and heart so powerfully, someone can overcome COVID-19, only to need a lung transplant that they can't get in time. So, the death is technically due to organ failure brought on by COVID-19. It's like saying that smoking doesn't kill you, it's the cancer that does.
But then Ernst broke out the a heartless conspiracy about the motivations of doctors, nurses and first responders, many of whom have given their lives to help people make it through this pandemic:
“These health care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?” she asked the crowd.
It isn't known if Ernst is simply too ignorant to know better or if she is intentionally misleading Iowa voters to downplay the virus and put their lives in danger. Either way, if people believe what she says, they will get hurt.
"What may have started as a debunked conspiracy theory — that doctors are conniving to over-count patients — is now seriously propounded by a U.S. senator," said Rubin.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the National Institute of Health, has said that if anything, it's that COVID-19 deaths are being undercounted.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) has followed Trump’s lead on the lies about the Black Lives Matter protests responding to the shooting of unarmed Black people at the hands of police.
It was a photo of armed Black men and protesters saying, “If this shows up, we’ll consider the armed presence a real threat. We being, We the People, of Louisiana. One way ticket fellas. Have your affairs in order.”
Rubin explained that by using the word "this," Higgins is dehumanizing those people as nothing more than objects, not humans or Americans.
"The response? No rebuke. No censure. No expulsion from Congress. Is it any surprise? A party that welcomes two QAnon-embracing congressional nominees has become a cesspool of hate and conspiracies," wrote Rubin.
"Beyond expressions of overt racism and ongoing support for totems of the Confederacy, denial of systemic racism is now the default setting for virtually all Republicans, including the president, attorney general and members of Congress," wrote Rubin, citing statistical data.
It isn't just the judicial system, she explained, there are also "the series of unjustified police killings of African Americans, the disproportionate number of Black people afflicted by COVID-19, and nearly every other social or economic indicator (from life span to wealth) reveal that the tentacles of racism still have a stranglehold on the country."
"All of that is in addition to other atrocities from the GOP," said Rubin. "Republicans routinely amplified Russian propaganda; repeated outright lies (e.g., that President Barack Obama illegally spied on Trump or that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found no evidence of obstruction of justice); went along with Trump for months in his anti-mask sneering; echoed baseless claims of widespread voter fraud; and joined Trump’s hunt for the identity of the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal (whom they dubbed a traitor)."
It doesn't matter whether they actually believe what they're "regurgitated" from Trump, Rubin said, they're assaulting the truth in a desperate attempt to hold onto what little power they have left.
"House and Senate Republicans are not helpless bystanders in the Trump travesty," Rubin closed. "They protected him from criticism, enabled his antics and amplified his most egregious lies. Once you determine Trump is unfit to serve, it really is not possible to give the rest of the party a clean bill of health."
A music teacher at a Christian private school in Michigan claims that he was fired after he raised concerns about its decision to reopen while defying some of the state's COVID-19 safety mandates.
In an interview with Michigan Radio, part-time teacher Nathan Smith claims that he was dismissed from his job at Oakdale Academy after he brought up problems with its reopening strategy to headmaster David Stanton.
In particular, he said that he was disturbed by the school's decision to make face masks optional for students, while also asking parents to sign liability waivers and a "facial coverings exemption" that claims wearing masks in school "may impede the educational process and/or be uncomfortable for adults and children."
In a video published by the school, Stanton informed parents that he did not want there to be disputes about wearing masks -- and he linked the "divisiveness" about the face mask debate to "Satan."
"I don’t want divisiveness here," he said. "I do not want to allow our enemy Satan to gain a foothold, not even a toehold, in this school... We cannot allow a debate about science to reign."
Smith says that after he brought up his concerns about the mask rules to Stanton, the headmaster said he'd rather not open the school at all than mandate masks.
"He made it very clear that he would rather close the school’s doors than open with too many restrictions," he said.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted on Thursday that President Donald Trump does not want people to break the law even though he advised his supporters to vote twice.
Trump made the remarks during a visit to North Carolina on Wednesday.
"On your ballots, if you get the unsolicited ballots, send it in and then go make sure it counted," the president told supporters. "And if it doesn't tabulate, you vote. And then if they tabulate it very late, which they shouldn't be doing, they'll see you voted and so it won't count."
"So, send it in early and then go and vote," he added.
Fox News host Sandra Smith highlighted the problem with Trump's plan during an interview on Thursday with McEnany.
"That would obviously, if that's the suggestion, be against the law, Kayleigh," Smith explained. "Why did the president say that?"
For her part, McEnany denied that the president said what he said.
"The president is not suggesting anyone do anything unlawful," the press secretary asserted. "What he said very clearly there is make sure your vote is tabulated and if it is not then vote. Basically, when you get an absentee ballot and you send it in, there are poll books and it is recorded that you have in fact voted. And if you show up at a polling site, they look at the poll book and say your vote has been counted."
"But Kayleigh," Smith interrupted. "He said, 'Send it in early and then go and vote.' Isn't that telling someone to go vote twice?"
"The president said send it in early, go and see if it's been tabulated, if it hasn't been tabulated, then vote," McEnany said, ignoring the words quoted by Smith.
"It's very clear," she added. "What Democrats are saying is we want a system full of fraud and we want zero accountability and zero verification that you voted when we know that hundreds of thousands ballots were not counted in 2016 before we had this fraudulent system."
Sylvia Dollarson's great grandson was killed by Portland police in 2017. Last Friday night, she was attending a Black Lives Matter protest when someone pulled a gun on her, KGW8 reports.
“We had a man say, ‘All lives matter,’” said Dollarson's daughter Donna Hayes. “I had a megaphone and I said, ‘All lives can't matter until Black lives matter.’ That was education.”
The protest was moving in the form of a car caravan through Portland’s East Columbia neighborhood when a man driving a truck blocked traffic.
“This man blocked the caravan,” said Dollarson. “I thought that because of my age and because I'm the great-grandmother of Quanice, I thought that maybe I could talk to him.”
The man was moving his truck back and forth to impede the caravan, and Dollarson approach his window to ask him to stop.
Amanda Carpenter is not a liberal. She not even a moderate. She's worked for two of the most right wing Republican Senators and at several far right wing publications. Now a CNN conservative contributor, Carpenter is also anti-Trump. And she's warning about how she thinks President Donald Trump is already rigging the election.
Wednesday evening she posted a Twitter thread in response to Attorney General Bill Barr's disastrous and disturbing CNN interview. One part of his comments, she says, that "set off alarm bells" for her was Barr's odd insistence that a foreign government could send thousands of fake ballots to rig the election – and that he refused to offer any evidence, other than what he says is "logic."
Here's Barr making the strange claim to Wolf Blitzer. Notice how Blitzer seems stunned and for a moment speechless when Barr says "logic."
Carpenter, who by the way was a senior staffer for Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Jim DeMint, goes on to explain her reasoning.
Basically, she's saying Trump is going full-force against mail-in ballots, while the Trump administration lays the groundwork to blame China for rigging the election against him. Carpenter explains how:
"Let me tell you why. Trump has said the election will be rigged. He has cast aspersions over mail-in ballots. And now the AG is suggesting foreign interference w mail in ballots. While the Admin refuses to provide oral briefings about election interference to Congress."
Yes, the Trump administration has notified Congress it will no longer provide them with in-person intelligence briefings. Only written information.
"That means whatever written story about election interference that goes to Congress is the story," she continues. "No pushback. And print material leaks. They will set the narrative. Barr and others are saying don’t worry about Russia. It’s China that’s the problem."
China allegedly is in favor of a Biden presidency over as Trump presidency.
"You don’t need a crystal ball to see it. Blame China for rigging mail-in ballots," she warns.
"This isn’t a cover-up. It’s what’s ahead."
By the way, CNN Anchor and Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto seems to agree with Carpenter:
President Donald Trump falsely believes that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman accused him of having Parkinson's disease -- and he reportedly won't shut up about it.
Sources tell The Daily Beast that Trump's anger at Haberman started in June when she filed a story about the president facing "new questions about his health... after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there."
However, Haberman never once mentioned Parkinson's disease in her story -- but that hasn't stopped the president from believing she said he has the disease.
"Sources say that the president has been stewing about this for nearly three months, and he still hasn’t let it go, bringing it up in the West Wing as recently as last week," The Daily Beast reports.
The report also notes that Trump has in the last week sent out multiple defensive tweets aimed at reassuring Americans about his physical and mental health.
"Some of Trump’s top officials were soon enlisted to aid in the effort to assure the public that the president’s brain was, indeed, functioning incredibly well," the report states. "Shortly after Trump’s tirade about 'mini-strokes,' his re-election campaign called for CNN to fire an analyst who asked his Twitter followers whether the president was hiding a past stroke from the American public."
Wisconsin swing voters are losing faith in President Donald Trump's leadership, but they're also making excuses for his failures.
Axios conducted a focus group with voters in Oshkosh, where they found only two in 10 party-flippers planned to vote for Joe Biden in November -- including one Barack Obama-to-Trump voter who no longer backs the president.
"He’s been trying so hard I feel, but nothing is working," said participant Kaycee W. "Everybody was fighting him every step of the way, so I feel he just gave up and isn’t trying as hard anymore."
The virtual Engagious/Schlessinger focus group of 10 swing voters was comprised of eight who had backed Trump in 2016 after voting for Obama in 2012, while the other two flipped from Mitt Romney to Hillary Clinton.
Several had not watched either party's convention, but six of the 10 wrongly believed Biden wanted to defund the police, as multiple speakers had claimed during the Republican National Convention.
"Anybody who believes there's systemic racism is going to vote for Joe Biden," said Trump supporter Thomas B., "and he wants you to believe there's systemic racism."
Participants seemed to agree that racism was a problem in society, but they had grown tired of hearing about police brutality and other issues raised by Black Lives Matter protests.
"It’s unfair that African Americans seem to be more targeted [by police]," Dawn M., "but that’s all you hear about. You don’t hear about what happened before, to proceed to the shooting."
One participant said "all the rioting" and "civil unrest" had made him less confident in Trump's leadership, but he doesn't blame the president for his own failures.
"The minorities, yes, are going to have less income, less resources, less everything else, so yes it may hit them a little harder," said Steve V. "But they’re spinning it ... to make their numbers look like it’s only affecting them."
On Thursday, The Detroit Newsreported that former Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) announced he would be voting for Joe Biden in November — blasting President Donald Trump as a "bully."
"As a proud nerd, I had to deal with bullies over many years," wrote Snyder in an op-ed for the USA TODAY network. "It is tragedy watching our world suffer from one."
Snyder is best known for being the governor who presided over the Flint water crisis, where thousands of people were exposed to lead after the city switched water supplies on the demand of state-appointed emergency managers.
"Other Michigan Republicans endorsing Biden include former Congressman Joe Schwarz, former Congressman Dave Trott, former Michigan Chamber of Commerce legal counsel Bob LaBrant, Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor and former state Reps. Doug Hart, Mikey Knight and David Maturen, according to Biden's website," said the report.
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Thursday said that he believed Attorney General Bill Barr and other conservatives do not believe racism is a problem in the United States, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
While breaking down Barr's interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Toobin said that the Trump administration seems to believe that protests against police brutality were spawned by a mass delusion among Black Americans who believe they are unfairly targeted by law enforcement.
"I think he does not believe there is a race problem in the United States," he said. "I think he honestly believes that. I think the president honestly believes that, and that the Black Lives Matter movement is fundamentally illegitimate, because there's no problem there."
Toobin then showed how Barr and other Trump officials regularly grant the presumption of innocence to police that they won't grant to Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot seven times in the back by police last month.
"It's very interesting that the attorney general and other officials are willing to speculate and divulge information about Jacob Blake, impugning his character," he said. "Talking about his background, his motives, but not give us any information about the officers' mindset and background and motives."
The United States is having a long-overdue national reckoning with racism. From criminal justice to pro sports to pop culture, Americans increasingly are recognizing how racist ideas have influenced virtually every sphere of life in this country.
This includes the environmental movement. Recently the Sierra Club – one of the oldest and largest U.S. conservation organizations – acknowledged racist views held by its founder, author and conservationist John Muir. In some of his writing, Muir described Native Americans and Black people as dirty, lazy and uncivilized. In an essay collection published in 1901 to promote national parks, he assured prospective tourists that “As to Indians, most of them are dead or civilized into useless innocence.”
Acknowledging this record, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune wrote in July 2020: “As defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we must…reexamine our past and our substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy.”
This is a salutary gesture. However, I know from my research on conservation policy in places like India, Tanzania and Mexico that the problem isn’t just the Sierra Club.
American environmentalism’s racist roots have influenced global conservation practices. Most notably, they are embedded in longstanding prejudices against local communities and a focus on protecting pristine wildernesses. This dominant narrative pays little thought to indigenous and other poor people who rely on these lands – even when they are its most effective stewards.
Native Americans protest President Donald Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, July 3, 2020.
Muir was not the first or last American conservationist to hold racist views. Decades before Muir set foot in California’s Sierra Nevada. John James Audubon published his “Birds of America” engravings between 1827 and 1838. Audubon was a skilled naturalist and illustrator – and a slaveholder.
Audubon’s research benefited from information and specimens collected by enslaved Black men and Indigenous people. Instead of recognizing their contributions, Audubon referred to them as “hands” traveling along with white men. The National Audubon Society has removed Audubon’s biography from its site, referring to Audubon’s involvement in the slave trade as “the challenging parts of his identity and actions.” The group also condemned “the role John James Audubon played in enslaving Black people and perpetuating white supremacist culture.”
The predominant view is that Roosevelt’s love of hunting was good for nature because it fueled his passion for conservation. But this paradigm underpins what I see as a modern racist myth: the view that trophy hunting – wealthy hunters buying government licenses to shoot big game and keep whatever animal parts they choose – pays for wildlife conservation in Africa. In my assessment, there is little evidence to support such claims about trophy hunting, which reinforce exploitative models of conservation by removing local communities from lands set aside as hunting reserves.
Ecologist Aldo Leopold, who is viewed as the father of wildlife management and the U.S. wilderness system, was an early proponent of the argument that overpopulation is the root cause of environmental problems. This view implies that economically less-developed nations with large populations are the biggest threats to conservation.
Contemporary advocates of wildlife conservation, such as Britain’s Prince William, continue to rely on the trope that “Africa’s rapidly growing human population” threatens the continent’s wildlife. Famed primatologist Jane Goodall also blamed our current environmental challenges in part on overpopulation.
Local communities are often written out of popular narratives on nature conservation. Many documentaries, such as the 2020 film “Wild Karnataka,” narrated by David Attenborough, entirely ignore local Indigenous people, who have nurtured the natural heritages of the places where they live. Some of the most celebrated footage in wildlife documentaries made by filmmakers like Attenborough is not even shot in the wild. By relying on fictional visuals, they reproduce racialized structures that render local people invisible.
Worldwide, some 370 million Indigenous people are at risk of being removed from their ancestral lands.
Fortress conservation
The wilderness movement founded by Anglo-American conservationists is institutionalized in the form of national parks. Writer and historian Wallace Stegner famously called national parks “the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”
Similar injustices continued to unfold even after independence in other parts of the world. When I analyzed a data set of 137 countries, I found that the largest areas of national parks were set aside in countries with high levels of economic inequality and poor or nonexistent democratic institutions. The poorest countries – including the Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia – had each set aside more than 30% of national territories exclusively for wildlife and biodiversity conservation.
Correcting this legacy can happen only by radically transforming its exclusionary approach. Better and scientifically robust strategies recognize that low-intensity human interventions in nature practiced by Indigenous peoples can conserve landscapes more effectively than walling them off from use.
Ecologists have shown that natural landscapes interspersed with low-intensity subsistence agriculture can be most effective for biodiversity conservation. These multiple-use landscapes provide social, economic and cultural support for Indigenous and rural communities.
Nonetheless, conservation institutions and policies continue to exclude and discriminate against Indigenous and rural communities. In the long run, it is clear to me that conservation will succeed only if it can support the goal of a dignified life for all humans and nonhuman species.
Prakash Kashwan, Co-Director, Research Program on Economic and Social Rights, Human Rights Institute, and Associate Professor, Department of Political Science., University of Connecticut
