Attorney General William Barr has vigorously defended the use of aerial surveillance against nonviolent George Floyd protestors in Washington, D.C. as well as in Minnesota, California and Arizona. But Sami D. Said, inspector general for the United States Air Force, disagreed with Barr’s claims and and described him as “mistaken” in a report released on Monday, August 24.
Reporter Colin Kalmbacher, in Law & Crime, notes that Barr has defended that aerial surveillance based on the statute 32 U.S.C. § 502(f) — which, Barr said, “authorizes states to send forces” in support of “operations or missions undertaken by the member’s unit at the request of the president or secretary of defense.” But Said, in his report, found Barr’s claims to be misleading, saying, “Policy interpretations by (the National Guard Bureau, NGB) led to a mistaken belief that (secretary of defense) approval for use of the RC-25B was not required by intelligence oversight rules, and also led to a mistaken belief that 32 USC § 502(f) status was an appropriate status for RC-26B air crew and support personnel.”
Said’s report also noted that on June 3, the “(chief) NGB asked” the secretary of defense’s office to “approve Sec. 502(f) status” and the office “never approved the request because (the secretary of defense’s) staff could not find a lawful way to approve it.”
According to the report, “There was no evidence that POTUS, SecDef or SecArmy knew of the RC-26B flights until it came to light in the media.”
Said, in the report, went on to say, “A comprehensive review of the mission authorities involved showed numerous directives in the area of support to civil authorities, with some nuanced distinctions. While authorities for support of border missions, counterdrug operations, and natural disasters such as wildfires, floods, hurricanes and the like were fairly well-known and regularly exercised, each has its own specific authorities and limitations. Employment of National Guard assets in response to civil unrest scenarios are highly unusual, distinctly different and require special measures.”
Since Gov. Greg Abbott declared a public health disaster in March, almost one-third of Harris County's evictions have been filed in the justice of the peace precinct covering the southwestern portion of the county.
Hilda Ramírez says she’s never missed paying rent. Even when the pandemic started and she couldn’t work for two months in the kitchen of a Houston restaurant, she managed to cobble together enough money from her siblings to pay for her two-bedroom apartment in Gulfton.
But two months ago, as Texas steered into a recession and the pandemic continued raging, Ramírez’s siblings also started having financial problems and couldn’t help her out. That’s when she started falling behind.
Last week, Ramírez got a letter from the management company telling her that she owed more than $2,000, including late fees, and that she had to leave. On Thursday, staff from the building came to her apartment.
“The manager came saying that I needed to get my stuff out because I haven’t paid rent,” the mother of four girls said. “To be honest, I don’t have anywhere to go.”
The two justices of the peace for Harris’ Precinct 5, unlike some of their counterparts elsewhere in the county, resumed eviction proceedings as soon as they were allowed, in mid-May.
Housing advocates point out that other justices of peace have stopped or slowed down eviction hearings, prioritizing only the ones that involve violent crime or a risk to the community. This has happened in Travis County, where no eviction hearings are being scheduled, and with some justices of peace in Dallas and Harris counties.
“Stopping evictions is a public health necessity, as a prevention measure, while we are dealing with this very contagious disease,” said Rodrigo Hernández, who protested at a Precinct 5 eviction court last week.
With more than 1.2 million residents, Precinct 5 spreads all the way from Katy in the west to the border of the affluent city of Bellaire and includes large swaths of Houston in between. It includes areas where many rental apartment complexes were built in the 1970s, during an oil boom. Today, those properties have become the homes for thousands of low-income immigrant families who have been disproportionately affected by unemployment, according to housing and community advocates working in the neighborhood.
Mitzi Ordoñez is a resident of the area and a community organizer with the Texas Organizing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for working-class Texans of color in some of the state’s biggest counties. She said many people in Gulfton work construction jobs or in restaurants.
“They work in jobs with no benefits, like health care or paid sick leave,” Ordoñez said.
According to a survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, 39% of renters in Texas weren’t certain they could pay their rent in August, but most eviction moratoriums enacted during the pandemic’s initial blow to the economy have expired. That includes moratoriums at national, state, county and city levels. The Texas Supreme Court lifted its statewide moratorium in mid-May. A provision included in the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which delayed evictions for tenants of federally backed housing, expired in late July.
The number of Texans without jobs skyrocketed in April, when the unemployment rate hit a record high of 13.5%. In July, that rate fell considerably to 8%. But it still remains much higher than the 3.5% rate of unemployment in July 2019.
More than 3.2 million people have applied for unemployment benefits since March. Meanwhile, help for the vast number of struggling Texans has been stretched precariously thin. In Houston, the first round of a rental assistance program ran out in 90 minutes, according to the Houston Chronicle. The city is now in a second round, but landlords — and not renters — have to apply.
“I’ve also tried with several churches, where I heard people could help me,” Ramírez said. “But they tell me that there are no more funds available, and I haven’t been able to get the help I’ve heard exists.”
A protester holds up a "stop evictions" sign outside the Harris County Courthouse in Houston. Credit: Pu Ying Huang for The Texas Tribune
A renters’ precinct
In Harris County’s Precinct 5, about 100 people last week protested the evictions in the court of Justice of the Peace Russ Ridgway, who is one of two judges for the judicial district. Although both judges are hearing eviction cases, protesters said that Ridgway’s court has more evictions scheduled and handles cases for immigrant neighborhoods like Gulfton.
“Eviction numbers are really high in this neighborhood. Most people living here are low income. … They are experiencing a lot of uncertainty.” Ordoñez said.
Ridgway’s docket last week had 109 eviction hearings scheduled, more than any other justice of peace in Harris County, according to records from the advocacy organization Texas Housers. Ridgway did not respond to requests for comment.
The Houston Apartment Association said that landlords in the city have also been deferring million of dollars in rent and canceling late fees to avoid filing for evictions. Andy Teas, the association’s vice president of public affairs, said it’s not surprising that Harris County’s Precinct 5 has the most eviction activity. According to January Advisors, the precinct also had the most evictions compared with other parts of the county before the pandemic.
Teas said the precinct isn’t just large but covers an area with a “tremendous amount” of apartments.
“There’s probably more rental apartments than in any other court in Texas.”
Ridgway, a Republican, is up for reelection in November. The Houston Apartment Association has endorsed him, though Teas said that’s because the group typically backs incumbents. Ridgway’s Democratic challenger, attorney Israel García, thinks the pandemic and its subsequent recession should have prompted a rethinking of how evictions are approached.
“We need to stress from the top down, all the way to the local level, that we need a national moratorium on eviction,” he said.
“Where are we going to sleep?”
Ordoñez thinks there are even more people affected than eviction dockets indicate. For one thing, she fears landlords are taking advantage of vulnerable tenants and bullying or threatening them into leaving before filing for evictions and going through the courts.
In his apartment complex 15 minutes away from Ridgway’s court, Rolando Pulido has already seen several of his neighbors kicked out. The father of five is worried he will be next.
Before the pandemic, he worked almost every night as a salsa DJ. His wife helped register students at a local school. Between their incomes, they were able to afford rent, their car, and food for their kids and his wife’s mother, who also lives with them in a two-bedroom apartment.
Then Pulido and his wife both lost their jobs during this spring’s statewide shutdown, and they haven’t gotten them back. Through friends, Pulido found jobs landscaping, installing floors and painting houses, among other things. Many times, he had to learn a job from scratch.
But that wasn’t enough, and he also had to borrow money from his friends.
“I’m super indebted. If I have to ask for more money, I wouldn’t be able to show my face again,” Pulido said. “For this upcoming month’s rent, I’m trying to find more days of work, because I don’t think I can make it.”
Ramírez has the same worries for herself and her daughters. The restaurant where she works reopened, but she’s only getting 10 hours a week. It’s not enough to cover rent, and on Monday she got a letter from court, telling her that her eviction hearing is scheduled for Sept. 10. Her landlord did not respond to a request for comment.
But Ramírez said her family was already feeling the impact of not being sure of what tomorrow will bring, even before getting the notification.
“My youngest one asks, ‘Mom, where are we going to sleep? Where are we going to eat?’” Ramírez said. “I just say to her, ‘Don’t worry, God will provide.’”
However, Politico reports that the president's entreaties to suburban women are so far falling on deaf ears, as many women in who live in suburban North Carolina said they see right through the president's scare tactics.
"He fuels the fire and wants to make people like me feel like it’s coming this way,” said Susan Sandler, a resident of Cornelius, North Carolina. "It’s just Trump’s rhetoric to try to scare people."
72-year-old Sue Rankin-White, meanwhile, said that she was not at all afraid of the prospect of riots breaking out in her suburban community due to Joe Biden getting elected.
"I haven’t heard anyone voice concerns about being afraid that angry mobs are going to come out this way," she said.
And Meredith Wolverton, a Trump supporter who is opposed to COVID-19 restrictions in her community, told Politico that she's "not concerned" about riots exploding on her street if Biden becomes president.
North Carolina state Sen. Natasha Marcus told the publication that Trump's attacks on low-income housing are particularly out of touch with what suburban voters actually want.
“I want affordable housing. Because guess who lives in affordable housing? Teachers. Police officers,” she said. “So when Trump says, ‘I’m going to stop that program, so you don’t have to worry, suburban housewives,’ it’s like: Are you talking to me?”
In a letter to the presidents of major news networks Monday, a coalition of progressive groups asked that the airing of the Republican National Convention be delayed by one minute in order to "help prevent the spread of dangerous disinformation in real time."
Members of the coalition—including UltraViolet Action, ACRONYM, BlackPAC, Color of Change PAC, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and others—warn that a number of scheduled speakers at the RNC, with speeches and prime time coverage kicking off Monday night, have actively spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, police violence, and abortion.
"As our nation battles the dual crises of systemic racism and the coronavirus pandemic, relying on the media for factual, life-saving information is crucial to the health of the American people and our democracy," the letter to the presidents of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBCUniversal and CBS reads.
x
The letter highlights Abby Johnson, an anti-abortion activist who has advocated against wearing masks to curb the spread of Covid-19, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple made famous when a photo of the pair waving guns at Black Lives Matter protesters went viral, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has compared Covid-19 deaths to deaths from influenza while pushing the theory that the coronavirus was developed in a lab in Wuhan, China, according to the letter.
The groups called out President Donald Trump for pushing a "birther" conspiracy against former President Barack Obama and, more recently, about Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
"The best way to combat the spread of disinformation is to stop it at its source," the letter reads. "By putting the Republican National Convention on a one-minute time delay, your network will be able to actively correct disinformation in real time, and prevent the American people from being lied to on your airwaves. The future of our country, our people, and our democracy are at stake."
CNN's Brian Stelter warned that news outlets would have to deal with "asymmetric lying" by the nation's political parties, noting CNN fact-checks of the DNC convention last week showed the Democrats spoke mostly in "generalities or offered subjective opinions" but that factual assertions made by convention speakers "have largely been accurate."
"We have seen throughout history how false theories and misinformation have been used to justify oppression and racism if they are not countered and debunked in real time," said Kimberly Peeler-Allen, director of Higher Heights Political Fund. "The rhetoric that is anticipated to come from the RNC will put lives in danger whether it is misinformation about Covid-19 or language that can be used to justify attacks on Black and brown people. We strongly implore all of the major networks to institute a time delay and fact checking because it can and will save lives."
Bridget Todd, a spokesperson for UltraViolet Action, warned the GOP gathering would be a "disinformation cesspool filled with toxic misogyny, virulent racism, and flat out lies about the coronavirus pandemic."
Todd said that while it's not possible to keep the networks from airing the convention, "we can ask that they do their part to correct disinformation in real time and help stop its spread."
"CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS have previously cut away or run fact-checks in real-time during coronavirus briefings, and this should be no different," Todd added. "We've seen what happens when disinformation is allowed to spread unchecked, and the risks are just too great."
"The only thing you should be delivering is your resignation," Rep. Ayanna Pressley told DeJoy.
Democratic lawmakers ramped up their demands for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to step aside or be removed after the Trump megadonor on Monday demonstrated flippant ignorance of basic U.S. Postal Service operations, refused to cooperate with lawmakers' requests for documents, and declined to commit to reversing policy changes that have impeded the timely delivery of mail, including life-saving prescription medications.
"Louis DeJoy doesn't know much it costs to mail a postcard—but he's sabotaging the USPS 70 days before an election in which a record number of Americans will vote by mail. He needs to resign now."
—Stand Up America
"If Louis DeJoy will not step down, the USPS Board of Governors must immediately remove him. Our democracy is at stake," tweeted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, following DeJoy's testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
The hearing—DeJoy's second public grilling by lawmakers in less than a week—featured a number of testy exchanges in which the postmaster general dismissed widespread fears that he is sabotaging the Postal Service for the benefit of President Donald Trump, denied acting out of his own financial interest, and downplayed the extent to which he is responsible for changes that have caused mail backlogs across the nation—while also failing to name who he believes is responsible.
However, the former logistics executive did admit to a "deterioration in service" under his leadership, which began in mid-June after he was unanimously appointed by the USPS Board of Governors despite his potential conflicts of interest and complete lack of experience working for the Postal Service.
Questioned by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), DeJoy initially refused to commit to returning mail sorting machines that have been removed from post offices nationwide during his brief tenure—then said he would return the equipment if Congress approves a $1 billion in funding for the agency. On Saturday, the House approved legislation that would provide $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service.
In the face of elementary questions about USPS services and operations posed by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), DeJoy laughed as he failed to provide correct answers—or, in the case of Porter's question about the cost of mailing a postcard, any answer at all.
"I'm glad you know the price of a stamp, but I'm concerned about your understanding of this agency," said Porter. "And I'm particularly concerned about it because you started taking very decisive action when you became postmaster general. You started directing the unplugging and destroying of machines, changing of employee procedures, and locking of collection boxes."
Following the hearing, Porter tweeted that "it's bad enough the postmaster general doesn't know the basics of his agency."
"But to laugh off his ignorance? This isn't a joke for the millions of Americans who rely on USPS," Porter wrote.
DeJoy's refusal to clearly commit to handing over his calendars and documents about Postal Service operations during questioning by House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) led both lawmakers to suggest that the postmaster general will be subpoenaed if he fails to comply with the requests in a timely manner.
Several members of the Oversight Committee, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), urged DeJoy to resign during the hearing as he struggled to answer for his sweeping changes at the Postal Service.
After slamming DeJoy for directing "the systemic slowdown of mail delivery during a pandemic within months of a national election," Pressley said "the only thing you should be delivering is your resignation."
"At best, these actions represent irresponsible leadership from a novice who has absolutely no business leading a government agency," Pressley said of DeJoy's operational changes. "At worst, they are cruel, unethical, and anti-democratic."
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told DeJoy he previously avoided "following other colleagues who called on you to resign."
"But I do think now it's time for you to resign," Gomez said. "Not because necessarily there's this grand political conspiracy, but just the incompetence that we've seen when it comes to the Postal Service."
Following Monday's hearing, progressive lawmakers and organizations echoed the demands of Democratic members on the Oversight Committee.
"The Postmaster General needs to resign or be removed from office now," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted late Monday. "We need a postmaster general who will work overtime to ensure the prompt delivery of mail—not a top Trump campaign contributor who is undermining the Postal Service and slowing down the mail. DeJoy must go."
Advocacy group Stand Up America said "Louis DeJoy doesn't know much it costs to mail a postcard—but he's sabotaging the USPS 70 days before an election in which a record number of Americans will vote by mail."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough was gobsmacked by the parade of "cranks and misfits" on display during the Republican National Convention's first night of programming.
The "Morning Joe" host opened Tuesday's broadcast with a comparison between an over-the-top speech from Kimberly Guilfoyle -- a former Fox News broadcaster and Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend -- and a similar speech given by "The Office" character Dwight Schrute.
"Ladies and gentlemen, your 2020 Republican National Convention, wow," Scarborough began. "Good morning, it's -- I just -- you know, I just don't know where to go with what we all saw yesterday and what we saw last night. I was thinking back, people deeply offended in 1992 by Pat Buchanan's speech and, I mean, let me tell you something, that was [Winston] Churchill in the House of Commons in 1940 compared to everything we saw last night -- a bizarre collection of alternative facts and alternative realities told by cranks and misfits that would never be allowed inside any convention before this."
"The couple that carried guns outside their house and pointing at Black Lives Matter protesters saying Joe Biden wants to abolish the suburbs," he continued. "You go down the whole list and, of course, Donald Trump -- even had Donald Trump yesterday, even with his people begging him, stay on message, try to paint Joe Biden as a left-winger. Instead, he repeated his lie that Barack Obama spied on his campaign in 2016, something that has been disproven time and time again, and his own aides were so discouraged that he did it because he can't stay on script."
"But, you know, you had Don Jr. saying that the choice was between -- this is very funny, actually -- church, work and school, or rioting, looting and vandalism,' Scarborough added. "Yes, Don Jr. and Donald Trump is the paragon of church, work and school. You just go down the list. Even Nikki Haley, whatever she wants, I hope it's worth it for her."
Were they exercising their constitutional rights, or recklessly asserting their white privilege? The couple who brandished guns at protesters and were rewarded with speaking slots at the Republican convention embody the culture wars gripping America.
And in their few minutes in the TV spotlight they painted a dangerous, dark vision of America, where suburbanites will be under threat if President Donald Trump is not re-elected.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey made world headlines in late June when they pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters peacefully marching past their columned mansion on a private St. Louis street as part of demonstrations against racial injustice.
Video of the barefoot couple went viral, and the McCloskeys, both in their early sixties, were charged with felony unlawful use of weapons.
The McCloskeys have become key exhibits in a tense national debate involving race and the widening socio-economic divides, and Trump invited them to speak Monday on his party's largely virtual convention's opening night.
Instead of arguing in good faith about American gun rights, they parroted the president's fearful messaging that a Biden administration would unleash an invasion of the suburbs.
"What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country," Patricia McCloskey, sitting next to her husband, warned viewers in video remarks.
"Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats' America."
The decision to feature them at the convention has drawn both praise and revulsion.
The McCloskeys are law-abiding heroes to those who see them as die-hard supporters of 2nd Amendment gun rights defending their home against potential trespassers.
But many view them as villains -- wealthy white lawyers who threatened violence against people who did not look like them.
- 'We did nothing wrong' -
"I thought we were going to die," Mark McCloskey told Kimberly Guilfoyle, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, on her podcast last month. "We did nothing wrong and we're not going to back down."
The confrontation occurred during a wave of demonstrations over police brutality and racism prompted by the police killing in Minneapolis of an unarmed black man, George Floyd.
Trump has branded himself the "law and order" president in a bid to claw back ground against Democrat Joe Biden, who leads in polling.
The president has openly warned that Biden policies on low-income housing would "destroy suburbia" -- comments that Democratic Senator Cory Booker, who is black, deemed "blatantly racist."
The McCloskeys live in the wealthy enclave of Central West End, 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Ferguson, Missouri, the majority-black community where riots erupted in 2014 after a white policeman shot and killed 18-year-old African American Michael Brown.
"They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities, they want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning," Patricia told the convention.
The McCloskeys are known to flex their legal muscles against multiple parties.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, they have sued relatives for defamation and neighbors for altering a road, filed squatter's rights for land they have hostilely occupied, and destroyed bee hives placed outside their mansion by a Jewish congregation whose children were preparing to harvest the honey for Rosh Hashanah.
President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans opened their national convention on Monday by painting a dire portrait of America if Democrat Joe Biden wins the White House in November, arguing he will usher in an era of radical socialism.
Trump set the tone early in the day when he addressed Republican delegates in Charlotte, North Carolina, after formally securing the party's nomination for another term, and claimed without evidence that Democrats were trying to steal the election.
Republicans had vowed to offer an inspiring, positive message in contrast to what they characterized as a dark and gloomy Democratic convention last week. But the first night's prime-time program featured speakers who peppered their remarks with ominous predictions if Democrats win power.
"They'll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door," U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, one of Trump's staunchest backers in Congress, said, referring to an international criminal gang.
The four-day convention got under way at a critical juncture for Trump, who trails Biden in national opinion polls during a pandemic that has killed more than 176,000 Americans, erased millions of jobs and eroded the president's standing with voters.
Trump has focused on a "law and order" message in response to widespread protests following the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, and he has pushed schools and businesses to reopen despite the pandemic. Both messages represent the campaign's effort to win back suburban voters, especially women, who have abandoned the Republican Party in droves during the Trump era.
Donald Trump Jr., the president's oldest son, portrayed the ongoing civil unrest as violent assaults on small businesses by anarchists and said Democrats would fail to keep neighborhoods safe.
The convention's opening night also laid out what promises to be a central theme of the week: that Biden, a former vice president, and his running mate, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, will merely be puppets of radical left-wing activists.
Multiple speakers accused Biden of wanting to defund the police and ban fracking, though he has rejected both positions.
Another frenetic day for Trump threatened to overshadow his attempt to recalibrate the campaign, however. In Washington, congressional Democrats examined U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor, over whether he was deliberately sabotaging mail service to harm voting by mail, while one of Trump's closest advisers, Kellyanne Conway, prepared to depart the White House.
The New York attorney general's investigation into Trump's family business deepened on Monday, while the National Guard was deployed in Wisconsin following unrest after a Black man was shot in the back by police.
A Reuters investigation revealed a sex scandal involving evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr., a high-profile Trump supporter, whose tenure at the Christian university he runs appeared in limbo.
Trump on the attack
Earlier in the day, the president repeated his assertion that voting by mail, a long-standing feature of American elections expected to be far more common during the coronavirus pandemic, will lead to widespread fraud. Independent election security experts say voter fraud is extraordinarily rare in the United States.
As he has done repeatedly, Trump described states' responses to infections of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, in starkly partisan terms, casting lockdowns and other steps recommended by public health officials as attempts to influence voting in November.
"What they're doing is using COVID to steal an election," Trump said. "They're using COVID to defraud the American people - all of our people - of a fair and free election."
During the prime-time program, the party aired a video praising Trump for his handling of the pandemic, after Democrats spent much of their convention attacking his administration for an uneven response. Medical professionals and small-business owners credited Trump with saving lives and livelihoods.
But during a prerecorded appearance at the White House, where Trump spoke with several essential workers including some frontline health workers, none of the participants wore masks, which has become a partisan flashpoint despite recommendations from epidemiologists that masks can slow the disease's spread.
The night showcased some of the party's diverse members to try to appeal beyond Trump's largely white base, including Senator Tim Scott, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, and Nikki Haley, Trump's former ambassador to the United Nations, who is Indian American.
"In much of the Democratic Party, it's now fashionable to say that America is racist," said Haley, who is widely seen as a possible future presidential contender. "That is a lie. America is not a racist country."
But the program also featured speakers seemingly aimed at firing up Trump's base, including Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a couple from St. Louis who drew national attention for brandishing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who marched past their home.
As befits the first president who starred in his own reality television show, the four-night event will focus heavily on Trump himself. While his acceptance speech will not come until Thursday, when he will address Republicans from the White House, Trump plans to appear each night, and several members of his family were due to deliver prime-time speeches.
In contrast to the Democratic convention, which featured three former presidents, the Republican event does not include former Republican President George W. Bush, who has declined to endorse Trump's reelection.
Biden, 77, and his fellow Democrats portrayed Trump, 74, as a force for darkness, chaos and incompetence during their convention, while stressing the Democrats' diversity and values like empathy and unity."
Several former Department of Justice employees who were appointed by Republican presidents are issuing a dire warning about what will happen to the rule of law if President Donald Trump wins a second term.
In an interview with Politico, former deputy attorney general Donald B. Ayer said that Trump would face even fewer constraints in a second term than he has in his first term.
"I think a lot of us are extremely alarmed, frankly, at the threat of autocracy," said Ayer, who was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. "He’s going to be unleashed if he gets a second term. I don’t know what’s going to stop him."
Other officials who joined Ayer in denouncing Trump and throwing their weight behind Democratic rival Joe Biden include Charles Fried, former U.S. solicitor general under the Reagan administration; Peter Keisler, former U.S. acting attorney general under George W. Bush; Paul Rosenweig, who served in the department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush; and Robert Shanks, former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration.
"There’s no reasonable choice here at all," Ayer said. "Trump is a person who is utterly unfit to serve. I don’t want to be apocalyptic but if he were reelected then all of the tendencies that we’ve seen in the first term — and they keep getting scarier and scarier."
Thousands of firefighters made small progress on Monday as they battled to contain historic wildfires in California, with potentially dangerous lighting storms proving milder than expected and temperatures easing.
Governor Gavin Newsom said some 625 fires were burning throughout the state and had scorched more than 1.2 million acres -- nearly the size of the Grand Canyon.
Of those fires, 17 were considered major, he said, including the LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex -- which comprise several fires each and have become two of the largest blazes in the state's history as far as acreage burned.
The LNU Lightning Complex which erupted north of San Francisco on August 8 was 22 percent contained Monday afternoon.
The SCU Lightning Complex, which also erupted August 8 and is burning southeast of San Francisco, was 10 percent contained early in the day.
Another major fire -- the CZU Lightning Complex -- has burned through areas closer to the coast.
The fires have for the most part been sparked by so-called dry lightning strikes in the central and northern part of the state.
"We are essentially living in a mega-fire era," said Jake Hess, a unit chief in Santa Clara for state firefighting agency Cal Fire.
"We have folks that have been working for Cal Fire for the last five years and that's all they understand, it's mega fires since they've started."
Hess said the fires have become larger and more dangerous every year and warned that firefighters had to pace themselves to get "to the end of this marathon."
Pandemic complicates fire response
The fires have destroyed more than 100 homes and other structures and are threatening 100,000 more buildings, officials said.
Some 14,000 overstretched and exhausted firefighters - some from other states or even Canada and Australia -- have been struggling to contain the flames.
The staggering scale of the fires, coming this early during fire season which normally runs from August to November, is unprecedented.
Still, there was some relief for fire crews overnight as high temperatures and low humidity that have fanned the flames in the past week eased a bit.
Lightning storms overnight also were not as widespread as initially feared.
But authorities urged people not to let down their guard as more lighting strikes could hit the region.
The fires have posed an added challenge to the state as it battles to contain the COVID-19 pandemic which has left many part of California still on lockdown.
Newsom said authorities were taking extra precautions -- including health screenings -- at shelters set up to accommodate some of the tens of thousands of people forced to evacuate because of the fires.
Dr Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, apologized Monday after misrepresenting a key statistic on how effective blood plasma is for treating COVID-19 when announcing an emergency approval measure.
The US on Sunday issued emergency approval for plasma taken from recovered coronavirus patients, so that more people can get access to the experimental treatment.
But Hahn and other senior health officials came under fire from experts after repeating a claim made by President Donald Trump that blood plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients reduced mortality rates by 35 percent.
"What that means is -- and if the data continue to pan out -- 100 people who are sick with COVID-19, 35 would have been saved because of the administration of plasma," Hahn said Sunday, after Trump had called it "a tremendous number."
Health secretary Alex Azar added: "I just want to emphasize this point, because I don't want you to gloss over this number. We dream in drug development of something like a 35 percent mortality reduction. This is a major advance in the treatment of patients. This is a major advance."
Such a reduction would indeed be a game changer in the fight against the pandemic -- but the statistic is false.
The officials said these results came from a study of 35,000 patients conducted by Mayo Clinic, but Dr Scott Wright, the study's leader, told AFP it did not come from his institution's research. He said he believed it might be an "integrated analysis" the FDA had arrived at by looking at both Mayo's work and other studies.
FDA spokeswoman Emily Miller later tweeted that 35 percent referred to the relative difference in mortality risk between those patients in Mayo's study who received a high level of antibodies against those who received a low level of antibodies.
"I have been criticized for remarks I made Sunday night about the benefits of convalescent plasma," said Hahn in a tweet thread on Monday night. "The criticism is entirely justified. What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction."
But it was not immediately clear which figures the FDA had used from the Mayo study to arrive even at this far more modest claim. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed and is available in "preprint" form on a medical research server, so it remains possible that more data will eventually be forthcoming.
The scientific community is divided on whether plasma should have received an emergency use approval.
Early research suggests it may be helpful and safe but no clinical trials -- considered the gold standard of medical research -- have yet found conclusively in its favor.
Political commentators have questioned the timing of the FDA's latest move as Trump lags in polls before the November election.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was accused Monday of using US foreign policy to support President Donald Trump's reelection bid after embarking on a trip to the Middle East, where he plans to remotely deliver an address to the Republican National Convention.
Pompeo suddenly flew out for a six-day trip to Israel, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan on Sunday, with the precise itinerary still uncertain, the reason for the urgency unclear and only one reporter in tow, when normally there are several.
"The US commitment to peace, security, and stability in Israel, Sudan, and among Gulf countries has never been stronger than under President Trump's leadership," the State Department said, announcing the trip.
Pompeo was meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials on the first stop in Jerusalem on Monday.
Officially, the mission was to herald the "historic" accord between Israel and the United Arab Emirates which Trump has called a success of his administration's Middle East peace efforts.
The administration says it is optimistic other Arab countries will follow suit and recognize Israel, and Pompeo's trip appears aimed to step up pressure on Bahrain and Sudan towards that end.
But with polls showing Trump well behind Democratic rival Joe Biden in the race, critics say the Republican president is seeking to use Middle East diplomacy to his domestic political advantage.
He is particularly aiming at building more support among Jewish and evangelical Christian voters with his groundbreaking recognition of the holy city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017.
Foreign policy 'stain'
But Pompeo's trip, which coincides with the opening Monday of the Republican convention to officially designate Trump the party candidate in the November 3 election, has raised questions among diplomacy experts and especially Democrats.
While on his fifth visit to Israel, Pompeo will reportedly record an address to the convention to be shown Tuesday.
"Secretaries of state have long taken pains to avoid mixing diplomacy with domestic politics," said Democratic Senator Bob Menendez.
"Doing so puts a stain on our nation's foreign policy and our electoral process," he said on Twitter.
Halie Soifer, director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, called it "unprecedented and highly unethical" for Pompeo to address the Republican fest while on a diplomatic mission.
With Pompeo's trip, she said, "Trump is once again using Israel to score political points."
She pointed to Trump's statement last week that he had controversially moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only to impress conservative American Christians, a core group of his support base.
"We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That's for the evangelicals," Trump said.
"The evangelicals are more excited about that than Jewish people," he added.
Pompeo's staff had no comment on the criticisms, some of which cited a law, the Hatch Act, which bans officials from engaging in electoral politics while undertaking official duties.
The State Department said Pompeo will address the convention in his personal and not official capacity.
"No State Department resources will be used. Staff are not involved in preparing the remarks or in the arrangements for Secretary Pompeo's appearance," an official told AFP in a statement.
The official added that, even as it happens during an official trip, the State Department would not "bear any costs" associated with the statement.
Some critics suspected the entire trip was arranged as a show for the convention, which will see Trump and top Republicans appearing on television for four nights straight to extol his record.
Normally a secretary of state would appear in person to deliver a powerful message for an incumbent president.
CNN's Van Jones on Monday night called upon Republicans to denounce President Donald Trump's racist rhetoric on the suburbs.
Jones said, "every Republican I'm going to call to denounce this move trying to scare white people saying we'll put people in the suburbs and riot and hurt you."
"That's not even a dog whistle, that's a bull horn," Jones declared.
"And if you guys want to compete for white women, do it on the basis of some of the great stuff you've done, but don't it based on scaring people about Black folks moving out to the suburbs, that's wrong and needs to be condemned by every Republican," he said. "That is literally dividing the country."
CNN analyst Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator, disagreed.
"Van, look at what's going on in some of these cities across America. I know you'd love to ignore it and in fact you do and in fact, you called them peaceful protesters, but they are not and what they are arguing for is not peaceful and is not mainstream, it is very much and anarchical or socialist or communist," Santorum argued.
"Listen, you have a convention right now and you have a chance to have some sway over what is right and what's wrong and what's fair and what's foul," Jones said. "I'll tell you this, the way to respond to is not what you saw tonight. You don't get people who are pulling guns out on unarmed protesters and turn them into national heroes and put in their mouths the language for your party that is 100% divisive."
At that point, CNN's Anderson Cooper jumped in.
"Senator, let me ask you, why, when the president says to what he calls suburban housewives, that put low-income housing next to you, why would he say that Cory Booker is going to be in charge of it to run it?" Cooper asked. "Why would the president do that other than a very blatant dog whistle of 'let me think of a prominent black man I can name who, in his words, suburban housewives might recognize?"
Santorum said he was unable to defend that comment.
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