Posted: May 10, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, immigration | Tags: Cameron Hamilton, Casey Means, China trade, David Richardson, empty ports, FEMA, homeland security, ICE, Kristi Noem, mass deportations, natural disasters, surgeon general, Trump Tariffs, Xi Jinping |
Good Afternoon!!
I didn’t think there would be much to write about today after Dakinikat’s post last night, but there actually are a whole lot of things happening–far more than I can cover here. With Trump, it’s always maximum chaos every day of the week. Here are some of the stories that captured my interest this morning.
The effects of Trump’s tariffs
We’ve seen the last of the ships without massive tariffs arriving in U.S. ports, and now we’re seeing the results of Trump’s insane policies.
CNN: Zero ships from China are bound for California’s top ports. Officials haven’t seen that since the pandemic.
On Friday morning, West Coast port officials told CNN about a startling sight: Not a single cargo vessel had left China with goods for the two major West Coast ports in the past 12 hours. That hasn’t happened since the pandemic.
Six days ago, 41 vessels were scheduled to depart China for the San Pedro Bay Complex, which encompasses both the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach in California. On Friday, it was zero.
President Donald Trump’s trade war imposed massive tariffs on most Chinese imports last month. That’s led to fewer ships at sea carrying less cargo to America’s ports. For many businesses, it is now too expensive to do business with China, one of America’s most important trading partners.
Officials are concerned not just about the lack of vessels leaving China, but the speed at which that number dropped.
“That’s cause for alarm,” said Mario Cordero, the CEO of the Port of Long Beach. “We are now seeing numbers in excess of what we witnessed in the pandemic” for cancellations and fewer vessel arrivals.
The busiest ports in the country are experiencing steep declines in cargo. The Port of Long Beach is seeing a 35-40% drop compared to normal cargo volume. The Port of Los Angeles had a 31% drop in volume this week, and the Port of New York and Jersey says it’s also bracing for a slowdown. On Wednesday, the Port of Seattle said it had zero container ships in the port, another anomaly that hasn’t happened since the pandemic….
“If things don’t change quickly, I’m talking about the uncertainty that we’re seeing, then we may be seeing empty products on the shelves. This is now going to be felt by the consumer in the coming 30 days,” said Cordero….
That doesn’t sound good to me, but Trump thinks it’s great.
Fortune, via Yahoo News: Trump calls emptying U.S. ports a ‘good thing’ despite supply-chain panic because ‘that means we lose less money.’
As logistics professionals sound the alarms on emptying U.S. ports as a result of steep tariffs, President Donald Trump said those major import slowdowns are actually a boon.
Following Trump’s introduction of sweeping tariffs, shipping volumes have fallen considerably, according to data from container-tracking software company Vizion. In the period between the five weeks before and five weeks after Trump introduced and implemented his tariff plan, virtually all major U.S. ports saw a decline in the number of container books. The Port of Portland in Oregon saw a 50% drop in exports, and the Port of Los Angeles, the U.S.’s largest outpost, had 17% lower exports. From the week ending April 28, Vizion reported a 43% week-over-week decrease in containers.
By Yayoi Kusama
Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka warned last month of a “precipitous drop” in shipping volumes, saying American retailers will have fully stocked shelves for only about another six weeks.
Trump not only acknowledged the shipping slowdown in a Thursday press briefing announcing a trade deal with the UK; he seemed heartened by it.
“We’re seeing as a result that ports here in the U.S., the traffic has really slowed and now thousands of dockworkers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs,” a reporter said in the press briefing.
“That means we lose less money,” Trump said. “When you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
He really is the stupidest president in the 250-year history of this country. He thinks it’s a good that longshore workers, truck drivers, and workers at package delivery companies like UPS and Amazon are going lose their jobs? That store shelves will be empty? That small businesses will quickly go bankrupt? He’s a fucking moron.
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania release an analysis of the economic effects of the Trump’s tariffs. Here’s the introductory summary:
Summary: Many trade models fail to capture the full harm of tariffs. PWBM projects Trump’s tariffs (April 8, 2025) will reduce long-run GDP by about 6% and wages by 5%. A middle-income household faces a $22K lifetime loss. These losses are twice as large as a revenue-equivalent corporate tax increase from 21% to 36%, an otherwise highly distorting tax.
Key Points
- Revenue Impact: President Trump’s tariff plan (as of April 8, 2025) is projected to raise significant revenue—over $5.2 trillion over 10 years on a conventional basis (with micro-elastic responses) and $4.5 trillion on a dynamic basis (with economic effects). This revenue could be used to reduce federal debt, thereby encouraging private investment.
- Comparison with a Corporate Tax Increase: Tariffs are estimated to raise about the same amount of revenue as increasing the corporate income tax from 21 to 36 percent, in the absence of these recent tariffs. While raising the corporate tax rate is generally seen as highly economically distorting, tariffs would reduce GDP and wages by more than twice as much. All future households are worse off. The estimated economic declines are likely lower bounds, with actual declines potentially even larger.
- Broader Economic Impact: Many existing trade and macroeconomic models fail to capture the full harm caused by tariffs. Larger tariffs reduce the openness of the economy, including international capital flows. This is especially costly under the nation’s current baseline debt path, which is increasing faster than GDP, that is generally excluded from trade models or treated as neutral (Ricardian). U.S. households would need to purchase more bonds, requiring bond prices to fall (yields increase), domestic capital investment prices to fall (the marginal product of capital increases), or both. Even conservatively assuming only domestic capital investment prices fall, the reduction in economic activity is more than twice as large as a tax increase on capital returns that raises the same amount of revenue.
I’m sure Trump hasn’t seen this report and wouldn’t understand it if he did.
China is poised to profit from Trump’s tariff obsession. David Pierson at The New York Times: This Is the Trade Conflict Xi Jinping Has Been Waiting For.
Xi Jinping has been preparing for this moment for years.
In April 2020, long before President Trump launched a trade war that would shake the global economy, China’s top leader held a meeting with senior Communist Party officials and laid out his vision for turning the tables on the United States in a confrontation.
Tensions between his government and the first Trump administration had been simmering over an earlier round of tariffs and technology restrictions. Things got worse after the emergence of Covid, which ground global trade to a halt and exposed how much the United States, and the rest of the world, needed China for everything from surgical masks to pain medicines.
Cat catching mouse, by Koson Ohara
Faced with Washington’s concerns about the trade imbalance, China could have opened its economy to more foreign companies, as it had pledged to do decades ago. It could have bought more American airplanes, crude oil and soybeans, as its officials had promised Mr. Trump during trade talks. It could have stopped subsidizing factories and state-owned companies that made steel and solar panels so cheaply that many American manufacturers went out of business.
Instead, Mr. Xi chose an aggressive course of action.
Chinese leaders must “tighten international production chains’ dependence on our country, forming a powerful capacity to counter and deter foreign parties from artificially disrupting supplies” to China, Mr. Xi said in his speech to the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission in 2020.
Put simply: China should dominate supplies of things the world needs, to make its adversaries think twice about using tariffs or trying to cut China off.
A bit more:
Mr. Xi has ramped up exports and deepened China’s position as the world’s leading base for manufacturing, in part by directing the state-controlled commercial banking system to lend an extra $2 trillion to industrial borrowers over the past four years, according to data from China’s central bank. He has also introduced new weapons of economic warfare to the country’s arsenal: export controls, antimonopoly laws and blacklists for hitting back at American companies.
So when the current Trump administration slapped huge tariffs on Chinese goods, China was able to go on the offensive. Besides retaliating with its own taxes, it imposed export restrictions on a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, the global supply of which China had cornered. Such minerals are essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles.
In the United States, the looming threat of empty store shelves and higher consumer prices is putting pressure on the Trump administration. The prices of some critical minerals have tripled since China unveiled its curbs, according to Argus Media, a London commodities research firm.
“It’s about flipping the leverage so that the world is reliant on China, and China is reliant on no one. It is a reversal of what Xi has been so irritated about, which is that China was so dependent on the West,” said Kirsten Asdal, a former intelligence adviser at the U.S. Department of Defense who now heads a China-focused consultancy firm, Asdal Advisory.
Trump’s attitude toward natural disasters
We’re approaching hurricane season, and it looks like states are going to be on their own when such disasters hit. Here’s the latest on Trump’s plans for FEMA.
CNN: Trump’s acting FEMA chief fired a day after breaking from the administration.
The acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been fired one day after he broke with fellow members of the administration when he told lawmakers he does not support dismantling the agency, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to CNN.
Cameron Hamilton, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, was escorted out of FEMA’s headquarters on Thursday, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
“It’s at the discretion of (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem) to have the personnel she prefers,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN, confirming that DHS official David Richardson will take over for Hamilton effective immediately. McLaughlin declined to explain why Hamilton was removed from the post.
The move comes one day after Hamilton defended FEMA during testimony in front of the House Appropriations Committee.
Woman and Cat, by Ukiyo-e Kuniyoshi
“As the senior advisor to the President on disasters and emergency management, and to the Secretary of Homeland Security, I do not believe it is in the best interest the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton told the committee Wednesday. “Having said that, I am not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination as consequential as that should be made. That is a conversation that should be had between the President of the United States and this governing body.”
For months, both Trump and Noem, whose Department of Homeland Security oversees FEMA, have called for the agency to be “eliminated.” On Tuesday, Noem reaffirmed that stance when she took questions from the same House committee.
“President Trump has been very clear since the beginning that he believes that FEMA and its response in many, many circumstances has failed the American people, and that FEMA, as it exists today, should be eliminated in empowering states to respond to disasters with federal government support.” Noem told the committee.
The Associated Press reports on the new FEMA boss: ‘Don’t get in my way,’ the new acting head of federal disaster agency warns in call with staff.
The new head of the federal agency tasked with responding to disasters across the country warned staff in a meeting Friday not to try to impede upcoming changes, saying that “I will run right over you” while also suggesting policy changes that would push more responsibilities to the states.
David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa, was named acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday just after Cameron Hamilton, who’d been leading the agency, also in an acting role, was fired.
Richardson has been the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. He does not appear to have any experience in managing natural disasters, but in an early morning call with the entire agency staff he said that the agency would stick to its mission and said he’d be the one interpreting any guidance from President Donald Trump.
Prefacing his comments with the words “Now this is the tough part,” Richardson said during the call with staffers across the thousands-strong agency that he understands people can be nervous during times of change. But he had a warning for those who might not like the changes — a group he estimated to be about 20% of any organization.
“Don’t get in my way if you’re those 20% of the people,” he said. “I know all the tricks.”
“Obfuscation. Delay. Undermining. If you’re one of those 20% of the people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not because I will run right over you,” he said. “I will achieve the president’s intent. I am as bent on achieving the president’s intent as I was on making sure that I did my duty when I took my Marines to Iraq.”
He sounds nice. On his plans for the future:
In a preview of what might be coming in terms of changes in policy, Richardson also said there would be more “cost-sharing with the states.”
“We’re going to find out how to do things better, and we’re going find out how to push things down to the states that should be done at the state level. Also going to find out how we can do more cost sharing with the states,” he said.
This issue — how much states, as opposed to the federal government, should pay for disaster recovery — has been a growing concern, especially at a time of an increasing number of natural disasters that often require Congress to repeatedly replenish the federal fund that pays for recovery.
But states often argue that they are already paying for most disaster recoveries on their own and are only going to the federal government for those events truly outside of their ability to respond.
Read more at the AP link.
Trump’s latest Surgeon General appointment
Supposedly, Trump appointed a woman who is not a doctor at the behest of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but allies of Kennedy argue that she’s not radical enough.
The Washington Post: Uproar over surgeon general pick exposes MAHA factions among RFK Jr. allies.
The backlash to President Donald Trump’s new surgeon general nominee, an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has exposed divisions in the nascent “Make America Healthy Again” movement as it gains political power.
By Katzuaki Horitomo Kitamura
Casey Means, the nominee, has been a central figure in the movement and key Kennedy ally. She promotes diet as a root cause of illness and chronic disease, echoing Kennedy’s focus on nutrition.
Trump praised Means as someone who holds “impeccable MAHA credentials,” but influential people in Kennedy’s orbit countered that she is insufficiently devoted to opposing vaccines, criticizing Means within hours of the announcement and describing her as unqualified.
In posts on X, the primary social media platform for the anti-vaccine movement, some vocal allies of Kennedy’s said the selection shows he lacks influence in the Trump administration.
“The new Surgeon General has never called for the COVID shots to be pulled off the market. That’s why she was picked,” Mary Talley Bowden, founder of the anti-coronavirus vaccine group Americans for Health Freedom, posted on X. “Kennedy is powerless.”
Good grief! This is worse than I ever imagined.
The conflict over the nominee for a lower-profile federal office reflects broader tensions over who wields influence in developing administration health policy and how far Kennedy must go to satisfy the demands of his MAHA movement. The surgeon general’s main role is as the nation’s family doctor, using a bully pulpit to dispense advice on smoking, loneliness, gun violence, alcohol and other health matters. It is a powerful platform, one that can help shape Americans’ views on important medical questions.
“This is really the first big fracture,” said Tara C. Smith, professor of epidemiology at Kent State University College of Public Health, who monitors anti-vaccine activists.“The surgeon general is the one who is usually out there and the face of the administration.”
As Means came under online assault, Kennedy posted twice on X in her defense on Thursday, calling her a “juggernaut against the ossified medical conventions.” He said the attacks were driven by “entrenched interests” and “industry-funded social media gurus,” though much of the criticism came from his own supporters.
“The goal of MAHA is to reform the largest and most powerful industry in the United States,” Kennedy said in a lengthy afternoon post, referring to the movement he developed during his unsuccessful presidential campaign. “I have little doubt that these companies and their conflicted media outlets will continue to pay bloggers and other social media influencers to weaponize innuendo to slander and vilify Casey, the same way they try to defame me and President Donald Trump.
The insane people have truly taken over our government.
Trump’s crackdown on immigrants
The New York Times: Trump Calls for 20,000 Extra Officers to Help With Deportation Efforts.
President Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security on Friday to increase the deportation force of the United States by 20,000 officers, a move that would lead to an enormous expansion of immigration enforcement if realized.
Japanese Girl with Cat, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
In a provision tucked into a presidential proclamation focused on pushing undocumented immigrants to leave the country voluntarily, Mr. Trump called on the Department of Homeland Security to soon begin “deputizing and contracting with state and local law enforcement officers, former federal officers, officers and personnel within other federal agencies, and other individuals.”
It was unclear how such an effort would be funded, one of several major logistical hurdles to such a large operation. There are now around 6,000 officers focused on deportation efforts at Immigration and Custom Enforcement.
Mr. Trump has pushed to deputize state and local law enforcement officers for immigration enforcement before, and Department of Homeland Security officials have already signed a series of agreements with local law enforcement in the months since took office. Late last month, local law enforcement officials in Florida assisted ICE in an operation that led to the arrest of more than 1,100 migrants across the state.
The Trump administration has spent the past few months attempting to make good on the president’s promise of mass deportations by conducting sweeping raids in major cities, arresting international students and allowing officers more freedom where they make arrests, like in courthouses. But it has still struggled to reach the pace that would be necessary for Mr. Trump’s expansive deportation goals.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has turned to pushing for migrants to leave the country on their own accord, a concept known as “self-deportation.” Earlier this week, department officials said they would pay migrants $1,000 and the cost of their travel if they left the country voluntarily and used a government app to do so.
In his proclamation Friday, Mr. Trump repeated that call, labeling it “project homecoming.”
Read about Project Homecoming here.
Dakinikat wrote last night about Stephen Miller’s plan to revoke the right to due process for immigrants.
Kyle Cheney at Politico: Judges warn Trump’s mass deportations could lay groundwork to ensnare Americans.
A fundamental promise by America’s founders — that no one should be punished by the state without a fair hearing — is under threat, a growing chorus of federal judges say.
That concept of “due process under law,” borrowed from the Magna Carta and enshrined in the Bill of Rights, is most clearly imperiled for the immigrants President Donald Trump intends to summarily deport, they say, but U.S. citizens should be wary, too.
Little girl with umbrella and cat, by Ukiyo-E
Across the country, judges appointed by presidents of both parties — including Trump himself — are escalating warnings about what they see as an erosion of due process caused by the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. What started with a focus on people Trump has deemed “terrorists” and “gang members” — despite their fierce denials — could easily expand to other groups, including Americans, these judges warn.
“When the courts say due process is important, we’re not unhinged, we’re not radicals,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Washington, D.C.-based appointee of President Joe Biden, said at a recent hearing. “We are literally trying to enforce a process embodied in probably the most significant document with respect to peoples’ rights against tyrannical government oppression. That’s what we’re doing here. Okay?”
It’s a fight that judges are increasingly casting as existential, rooted in the 5th Amendment’s guarantee that “no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The word “person,” courts have noted, makes no distinction between citizens or noncitizens. The Supreme Court has long held that this fundamental promise extends to immigrants in deportation proceedings. In a 1993 opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia called that principle “well-established.” [….]
“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” wondered J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Wilkinson described an “incipient crisis” but also an opportunity to rally around the rule of law.
That’s all I have for today. What stories are you following?
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Posted: October 5, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: conspiracy theories, disinformation, FEMA, Hurricane Helene, International Longshoremen's Association, Longshormen's strike, misinformation, rumors, Trump lies |
Happy Caturday!!
Walter Chandoha’s daughter Marie and kitten.
Today’s illustrations are by Walter Chandoha, a famed cat photographer.
It’s difficult to believe that Trump’s lying could get any worse, but it has. He is now spreading outrageous lies at a level no one has seen before, to use one of his favorite phrases. And when Trump lies, MAGA Republicans follow his example. Lately, Trump has been spreading dangerous lies about the government’s efforts to aid communities devastated by Hurricane Helene.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson published a piece about this today at her Substack “Letters from an American.”
MAGA Republicans are now lying about the federal response to Hurricane Helene in much the same way they lied about Haitian migrants bringing chaos and disease to Springfield, Ohio. Both disinformation efforts are flat-out lies, and both are designed to demonize immigrants. Immigration was the issue Trump was so eager to run on that he demanded Republican lawmakers reject the strong border bill a bipartisan group of lawmakers had hammered out.
The federal response to Hurricane Helene has drawn bipartisan praise, with Republican governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina thanking Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
But on Sunday, September 29, two days after the hurricane hit, the right-wing organization started by anti-immigrant Trump loyalist Stephen Miller posted: “Billions for Ukraine. Billions for illegal aliens. And what for the Americans? Reprogram every single dollar that FEMA has dedicated to support illegal aliens to go towards Americans who are facing unprecedented devastation!”
Yesterday, in Saginaw, Michigan, Trump echoed Miller, claiming that the Biden administration is botching the hurricane response because it has spent all the money appropriated for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on “illegal immigrants.” “They spent it all on illegal migrants.… They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them,” he said. Today, he claimed that “a billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants, many of whom are criminals, to come into our country.”
Early this morning, X owner Elon Musk posted to his more than 200 million followers: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you! It is happening right in front of your eyes. And FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” On Wednesday, Dana Mattioli, Joe Palazzolo, and Khadeeja Safdar of the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Musk has been financing groups with ties to Miller since 2022.
But of course, it is NOT happening in front of anyone’s eyes.
Walter Chandoha, The Mob
As always, Trump’s false claims represent projection of his own behavior onto others. Back to the Richardson piece:
Congress also appropriated money for a different fund, the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which is part of Customs and Border Protection but is administered by FEMA. Established under the Trump administration in 2019, SSP gives grants to states and local governments to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. After Trump’s accusation, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “These claims are completely false. As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters. The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post did not leave the story there. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Kessler wrote. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”
In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.”
Unfortunately, Trump supporters actually believe his nonsensical lies, and that could lead to people failing to get the help they need from FEMA. Read more examples at the Substack link above.
WYFF4 in Greenville, SC, posted FEMA’s responses to several rumors that have been fed by the MAGAs:
Rumor: FEMA does not have enough money to provide disaster assistance for Helene.
Fact: FEMA has enough money right now for immediate response and recovery needs. If you were affected by Helene, do not hesitate to apply for disaster assistance as there is a variety of help available for different needs.
By Walter Chandoha
Rumor: FEMA is asking for cash donations and turning away volunteers.
Fact: This is false: FEMA does not ask for or generally accept any cash donations or volunteers for disaster response. We do encourage people who want to help to volunteer with or donate cash to reputable voluntary or charitable organizations. After a disaster, cash is often the best way to help as it provides the greatest flexibility for these reputable organizations working on the ground to purchase exactly what is needed. If you encounter someone claiming to represent FEMA and asking for donations, be careful as that is likely a scam. Government employees will never solicit money. Learn more about how to help after a disaster: How to Help After Hurricane Helene
Rumor: Funding for FEMA disaster response was diverted to support international efforts or border related issues.
Fact: This is false. No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.
Rumor: FEMA is confiscating donations for survivors.
Fact: Rumors about FEMA turning away donations, stopping trucks or vehicles with donations, confiscating and seizing supplies often spread after a disaster. These are all false. FEMA does not take donations and/or food from survivors or voluntary organizations. Donations of food, water, or other goods are handled by voluntary agencies who specialize in storing, sorting, cleaning, and distributing donated items. FEMA does not conduct vehicle stops or handle road closures with armed guards — those are done by local law enforcement.
And this one in particular could badly hurt desperate survivors:
Rumor: FEMA will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
Fact: This is false. One type of assistance that is often approved quickly after you apply is Serious Needs Assistance, which is $750 to help pay for essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify to receive once you apply for disaster assistance. As your application continues to be reviewed, you may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing and home repair costs. Learn more about the types of assistance available. If you have questions about your disaster assistance application and what you qualify for, contact us at 1-800-621-3362 to speak with a FEMA representative.
It’s sickening that Trump and his followers are pushing this nonsense, and they will continue to do so.
From Reuters, another article on Helene misinformation: US officials struggle to quash Hurricane Helene conspiracy theories.
In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene in the United States this week, a new storm emerged on social media – false rumors about how disaster funds have been used, and even claims that officials control the weather.
Local and national government officials say they are trying to combat the rumors, including one spread by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
By Walter Chandoha
One of the more far-fetched rumors is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup.
Republican Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X Thursday night: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
The conspiracy theories come at a pivotal time for rescue and recovery efforts following the storm, one of the deadliest U.S. hurricanes this century. And the presidential election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is just over a month away.
Republicans and Democrats alike say the rumors are causing problems.
“I just talked to one Senator that has had 15 calls TODAY about why we don’t stop …….. ‘fill in the blank,'” said Kevin Corbin, a Republican in the North Carolina Senate – a state that is one of the hardest hit by Helene. “98% chance it’s not true and if it is a problem, somebody is aware and on it,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I’m growing a bit weary of intentional distractions,” he added.
White House officials on Friday accused some Republican leaders and conservative media of intentionally peddling rumors to divide Americans in a way that could harm disaster relief efforts.
“Disinformation of this kind can discourage people from seeking critical assistance when they need it most,” a White House memo said. “It is paramount that every leader, whatever their political beliefs, stops spreading this poison.”
This piece on disinformation is from Jordan Green at Raw Story: ‘Scares the hell out of me’: J6 expert warns of disinformation ramp-up in mid-October.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Denver Riggleman, who served as senior technical advisor to the January 6th Committee, said he believes there is a significant risk of violence during the vote count of the Nov. 5, 2024 election because supporters of Republican nominee Donald Trump are so deeply immersed in conspiracy theories.
“They still have a plan to probably use lawfare to go after some of these certain states, but violence is certainly possible,” Riggleman told Raw Story. “I would say it’s actually probable. And I think it’s because you have people that are so riled up with these conspiracy theories and this good-against-evilvendetta that Donald Trump and I think a lot of the far right and the Christian nationalist type of individuals have been pushing into sort of the MAGA communications ecosystem.
Walter Chandoha’s daughter Marie feeding cats.
“It scares the hell out of me, as someone who’s dealt in counterterrorism for so long, to know that some of the same people who are around him — or a lot of the same people around him — for January 6th, 2021,” Riggleman added, “are the same people in his campaign today and the same people who were authors of Project 2025.”
A former Republican congressman and former military intelligence officer, Riggleman spoke to Raw Story after taping a message to North Carolina Republicans and independent voters on behalf of the Harris campaign at a recreation center in Greensboro on Thursday.
“Violence is bubbling right beneath the surface,” Riggleman said, citing the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the two assassination attempts on Trump this past summer. Riggleman identified variations on the QAnon conspiracy theory as a driving force of political violence.
“QAnon and that whole conspiracy theory mindset of ‘the Deep State’ or ‘globalists,’ or ‘false flags,’ that has bubbled into almost a mainstream belief, I would say within 30 to 35 percent of the Republican Party,” he said. “So, now it’s a battle of good against evil, as far as they’re concerned. The Democrats, independents and the RINOs — whoever they are — represent what’s evil. And I think that should scare the hell out of people. Because once you start dehumanizing people, that’s when violence is possible.
Read more at Raw Story.
Walter Chandoha, Cat and kitten
The Washington Post declines to use the word “lie”: As Trump makes false claims about hurricane relief, White House calls it ‘poison.’
EVANS, Ga. — Former president Donald Trump doubled down on misinformation about Hurricane Helene in an appearance in this storm-ravaged state Friday, repeating the falsehood that the White House used disaster funds for migrants.
Speaking at a news conference after a state disaster briefing, Trump again falsely said the U.S. government is unable to fund the storm response because it used the money on people “who came into the country illegally” — claims that the White House slammed in a memo Friday as “poison.”
Trump’s comments that the White House is “missing $1 billion” that was used for migrants, as he said Friday, have created a swirl of misinformation around the Helene response. The White House warned Friday that the falsehoods could keep hurricane victims from seeking the assistance they critically need, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched an anti-rumor tool that counters Trump’s claims.
The Biden administration said in its memo — which did not name Trump but included a headline that did — that Republicans are spreading “bald-faced lies” about the hurricane response and are “using Hurricane Helene to lie and divide us.”
“It is paramount that every leader, whatever their political beliefs, stops spreading this poison,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in the memo, adding: “This isn’t about politics — it’s about helping people.” [….]
The federal government has mounted a huge response following routine protocol, sending supplies, meals and more than 1,000 personnel; taking aid applications from affected residents; and coordinating with state and local agencies. Search-and-rescue efforts are ongoing in remote areas. The response faces logistical challenges because of the scope of the damage, across six states, and some residents have complained about waiting for on-the-ground aid.
Trump’s claims, however, have focused on undermining confidence in the federal response and tying his political opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to that negative picture.
He has sought to blame the hurricane devastation on immigration, on Thursday falsely saying that those affected by the hurricane are getting “no help” because the federal government has instead spent its money “on people that should not be in our country.” In response to questions from The Post, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed that Harris “stole” money from FEMA and repeated the claim that the federal government had no funding, without providing evidence.
Good Lord, will be ever be rid of this evil monster Trump?
According to Politico, the devastation from Helene could affect turnout for Trump in November: Helene hit Trump strongholds in Georgia and North Carolina. It could swing the election.
Hurricane Helene hit especially hard in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina — a fact that could work to Donald Trump’s disadvantage in the two swing states.
Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference. And Helene has pushed this contest into novel territory: It’s the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election, based on a POLITICO’s E&E News analysis of data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The challenge for Trump: The parts of western North Carolina and eastern Georgia that were flooded by the monster storm are largely Republican. In 2020, he won 61 percent of the vote in the North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster after Helene. He won 54 percent of the vote in Georgia’s disaster counties.
Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris this week visited Georgia, a state that President Joe Biden won by just 11,779 votes in 2020. Georgia and North Carolina each have 16 electoral votes, and polls show that Trump is leading Harris by about 1 percentage point in each state, well within the margin of error.
“There’s going to be a lot of [voting] alterations, and it probably is going to affect turnout,” said Andy Jackson, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Civitas Center for Public Integrity, a free-market think tank in North Carolina.
Now, both states face crucial decisions in the next few days about how to help people register and vote after massive flooding ripped away roads, shuttered towns and dispersed residents. Those include whether to extend next week’s voter registration deadlines, grant more time for voters to cast absentee ballots, and set up new polling places in areas where floods destroyed roads.
State records show that nearly 40,000 absentee ballots were mailed to voters in the 25 North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster following Helene. Fewer than 1,000 have been returned.
Read more details at the link.
At the Washington Post, some good news for Harris/Walz and bad news for Trump/Vance: How Biden helped end a port strike that threatened Democrats in November.
It was a stark ultimatum, delivered by President Joe Biden’s most senior aide.
At 5:30 a.m. Thursday, before the sun had risen above his Washington home, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was on a Zoom call with two Cabinet secretaries and the executives of the shipping companies negotiating with workers who had gone on strike at critical docks along the East and Gulf coasts, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
With the nation’s economy — and much of the president’s legacy — hanging in the balance just weeks before the election, White House chief economist Lael Brainard told management that it needed to come up with a new offer to the striking longshoremen. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stressed that Hurricane Helene magnified the importance of a deal. Labor Secretary Julie Su expressed optimism that the union would agree to a temporary extension if raises were included.
Then in a surprising move, as the call was wrapping up, Zients told the board members of the U.S. Maritime Alliance that he was going to tell Biden in about an hour that they had agreed to propose a new offer to the union. By that point, the shipping executives had agreed to do no such thing. Zients was saying they would.
“I need the offer today — not tomorrow. Today,” Zients said on the call. “I’m going to brief the president in an hour that you believe you can get this done today.”
Walter Chandoha in his studio.
Less than 12 hours later, White House officials were celebrating a deal to reopen the ports until January — postponing the issue until after this November’s election. The agreement provides collective if temporary relief to skittish Democrats from the White House to Capitol Hill, while buoying Vice President Kamala Harris, along with Friday’s strong jobs report.
But the resolution of the strike also highlights Biden’s distinctive approach to labor unrest, one that has defied even his Democratic predecessors and sparked unease in some parts of the party. Even as White House officials claim vindication about their strategy, questions persist about whether Biden’s pro-union advocacy will be codified as the new Democratic approach — or represents a rare aberration in a long bipartisan tradition of siding more closely with management.
The agreement reached Thursday provides a 62 percent increase in wages for dockworkers and extends other terms of the current contract until Jan. 15. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) initially demanded 77 percent wage hikes but has moderated its request. Numerous difficult sticking points could scuttle a deal before the new January deadline, but if the deal holds, the pay gains amount to a $24-an-hour bump in the top pay rate over six years.
Trump really wanted the strike to last till election day. Just more evidence that Biden is a great president. I hope he will be an important resource for President Kamala Harris. See also this piece at CNN: Here are all the winners in the port strike deal.
Trump is running on lies and absolutely no substance. Reporters are demanding details on policy from Harris, but not from Trump–because he has no clue about policy and couldn’t care less about communicating anything except lies, lies, and more lies.
Check out this piece by John Stoehr at Raw Story: Trump’s 2024 strategy: A campaign about literally nothing.
It’s probably right to call Kamala Harris the change candidate. Though she’s the vice president, she’s running against forces that struck down Roe and stripped the basic freedoms from half the country. So, for many, voting for her is voting for the restoration of individual liberty.
But I believe she’s a change candidate for another reason.
To understand, you have to reimagine Donald Trump. Think of him less as the Republican challenger to a Democratic administration and more as a kind of over-incumbent. He’s more or less an omnipresence, as if he were now sitting in the White House. His face is everywhere. His words are everywhere. The man takes up all the oxygen in every room.
Joe Biden is the president. Harris is his second in command. But since 2015, they and the rest of us have been living in the era of Trump.
And the dominant trait of our era has been negation.
As president, Trump was against fairness and balanced budgets when he cut taxes for the rich. He was against free trade and free labor when his administration tried to complete a border wall. He was against peace and diplomacy when he sabotaged relations with US allies. He was against competence when his negligence killed over a million people in the pandemic. And he was against democracy and the rule of law when he tried and failed to overturn a free and fair election.
What Donald Trump started as president, he has continued as the GOP nominee, the main difference being that the scale of negation is so massive that his own campaign is now about nothing, literally nothing.
There are no serious policies. There are no serious plans to solve problems. He isn’t giving anyone a reason to vote for him. Trump is only “s— talking America,” as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro put it, for the purpose of negating Kamala Harris and his enemies.
And to hide the blindingly obvious fact that Trump’s campaign is about nothing, he has made up fantastical lies about the economy being the worst on the planet, America being a “failing nation,” foreign leaders “laughing at us,” big cities being overrun by criminals, thugs slitting throats, gangs raping women and, of course, Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs. Trump’s latest whopper is about the United States government refusing to help hurricane victims if they’re Republicans.
As Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote: “At this point, the Trump campaign rests entirely on denouncing things that aren’t happening — an imaginary bad economy, imaginary runaway crime and now an imaginary failure of Biden and Harris to respond to a natural disaster.”
Of course, his campaign is about nothing, because he believes in nothing.
Read the rest at Raw Story.
Trump is everywhere, dominating the news, spreading his lies much more quickly than they can be fact-checked. It makes no sense that this criminal, this monster, is actually permitted to run for president of the United States. Yet it is happening. I hope and pray he can be defeated.
Take care yourselves and your loved ones, everyone!
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Posted: September 2, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, cat art, caturday, just because | Tags: Astrophysics, Coffee County GA, Elon Musk, FEMA, Jimmy Buffett, Joe Biden, Ron De Santis, Webb Space Telescope |
Christabel with cat by Camilla Dickerson
Happy Caturday!!
We’ve lost another musician from my generation. Jimmy Buffett has died last night at age 76. He was very popular in Boston and played outdoor concerts on the Boston Common many times.
From Kelly McClure at Salon: Jimmy Buffett got in one last summer before shipping off to the big Margaritaville in the sky.
There’s a poetry to Jimmy Buffett checking out just prior to a holiday that celebrates working. As a musician who built a reputation for himself as someone who encouraged grabbing on to leisure — and a frosty margarita — whenever possible, you can almost hear him saying, “Labor? Hard pass,” before kicking up his heels in a swaying hammock one last time.
According to an official statement posted to his website, “Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs. He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.” He was 76-years-old. No cause of death has been given at this time.
Throughout his career, Buffett shrugged off pressure to seem “cool” or insert himself as a cog in the machine of industry or publicity. His best known song, “Margaritaville” (released in 1977) was his only Top 10 hit. “What seems like a simple ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often painful inertia of beach dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021. “The tourists come and go, one group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and break whether somebody is there to witness it or not. Everything that means anything has already happened and you’re not even sure when.” Buffett broke the mold, and the world is a little less chill with him gone.
The New York Times’ take by Bill Friskics-Warren: Jimmy Buffett, Roguish Bard of Island Escapism, Is Dead at 76.
Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76.
His death was announced in a statement on his website. It did not say where he died or specify a cause. Mr. Buffett had rescheduled a series of concerts this spring, saying he had been hospitalized, although he offered no details.
Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett’s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, salt water and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads.
Mr. Buffett found success primarily with albums. He enjoyed only a few years on the pop singles chart, and “Margaritaville,” his 1977 breakthrough hit, was his only single to reach the pop Top 10.
By Noeline Mostert
“I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,” he sang woozily to the song’s lilting Caribbean rhythms. “But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”
Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western” — a play on the name of the conglomerate Gulf & Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, as well as a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics.
His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and clever up-tempo numbers like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett’s seafaring grandfather, written with the producer Norbert Putnam.
“I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/
Son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”
The Caribbean and the Gulf Coast were Mr. Buffett’s muses, and no place was more important than Key West, Fla. He first visited the island at the urging of Jerry Jeff Walker, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner, after a gig fell through in Miami in the early 1970s.
“When I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn’t really successful yet,” Mr. Buffett said in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post. “But I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.”
Read more at the NYT.
I’m really in a vacation frame of mind right now. Even though I’m retired and don’t have to keep a rigid schedule, I seem to get this laid back feeling on holidays and long weekends. I don’t have to be anywhere or worry about anyone knocking on my door for three days. I just want to read a good book or watch a movie on TV and hang out. I just started reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and it’s very good. Anyway, I don’t feel much like focusing on politics today. And I especially don’t want to read anything about Donald Trump.
There’s a very interesting non-political opinion piece in The New York Times today by Astrophysicist Adam Frank and theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser: The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel.
Not long after the James Webb Space Telescope began beaming back from outer space its stunning images of planets and nebulae last year, astronomers, though dazzled, had to admit that something was amiss. Eight months later, based in part on what the telescope has revealed, it’s beginning to look as if we may need to rethink key features of the origin and development of the universe.
Launched at the end of 2021 as a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb, a tool with unmatched powers of observation, is on an exciting mission to look back in time, in effect, at the first stars and galaxies. But one of the Webb’s first major findings was exciting in an uncomfortable sense: It discovered the existence of fully formed galaxies far earlier than should have been possible according to the so-called standard model of cosmology.
According to the standard model, which is the basis for essentially all research in the field, there is a fixed and precise sequence of events that followed the Big Bang: First, the force of gravity pulled together denser regions in the cooling cosmic gas, which grew to become stars and black holes; then, the force of gravity pulled together the stars into galaxies.
Helena Wagenaar, South Africa
The Webb data, though, revealed that some very large galaxies formed really fast, in too short a time, at least according to the standard model. This was no minor discrepancy. The finding is akin to parents and their children appearing in a story when the grandparents are still children themselves.
It was not, unfortunately, an isolated incident. There have been other recent occasions in which the evidence behind science’s basic understanding of the universe has been found to be alarmingly inconsistent.
Take the matter of how fast the universe is expanding. This is a foundational fact in cosmological science — the so-called Hubble constant — yet scientists have not been able to settle on a number. There are two main ways to calculate it: One involves measurements of the early universe (such as the sort that the Webb is providing); the other involves measurements of nearby stars in the modern universe. Despite decades of effort, these two methods continue to yield different answers.
At first, scientists expected this discrepancy to resolve as the data got better. But the problem has stubbornly persisted even as the data have gotten far more precise. And now new data from the Webb have exacerbated the problem. This trend suggests a flaw in the model, not in the data.
Two serious issues with the standard model of cosmology would be concerning enough. But the model has already been patched up numerous times over the past half century to better conform with the best available data — alterations that may well be necessary and correct, but which, in light of the problems we are now confronting, could strike a skeptic as a bit too convenient.
Physicists and astronomers are starting to get the sense that something may be really wrong. It’s not just that some of us believe we might have to rethink the standard model of cosmology; we might also have to change the way we think about some of the most basic features of our universe — a conceptual revolution that would have implications far beyond the world of science.
Keep reading at the NYT link.
A few political stories:
CNN has an important article on Georgia’s Coffee County, where some Republicans are charged by Fani Willis with illegally accessing election data. Elle Reed and Samantha Guff at CNN: ‘Crooked Coffee’: The alleged election office breach in the Trump indictment was part of a years-long pattern, some locals say.
The breach of the Coffee County elections office can seem almost out of place in the 97-page Georgia indictment of former President Donald Trump and associates.
The sprawling racketeering allegations spread from centers of power with pressure on the vice president to ignore the Constitution, reported calls to secretaries of state to change vote counts, and the creation of slates of fake electors for Congress. They also include the invitation of a tech team to a non-public area of a small-town administration building.
But to some people in Coffee County, deep in southern Georgia and far from interstates, the alleged crimes were merely the latest chapter in a local history of failing to secure the rights and votes of residents. And they worry it’s a history that will repeat.
Among the 19 mugshots that flowed from the charges brought 200 miles north in Atlanta were faces that were familiar in Douglas, the seat of Coffee County.
By Virginia Di Savarino, Italy
Prosecutors allege that former county Republican Party chair Cathy Latham and former elections supervisor Misty Hampton helped to facilitate employees from a firm hired by Trump attorneys to access and copy sensitive voter data and election software. Surveillance video captured Latham waving the visitors inside, and Hampton in the office as they allegedly accessed the data. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Mike Clark, owner of some small businesses in Douglas, said he was struck by the way the surveillance footage showed the election officials entering the building in broad daylight. “You walk inside the voter registration office with no mask on, and they just give you the votes. They just give them to you! Why? Why would that be?” Clark said. “That shows you right there it ain’t just started. It’s always been just like that.”
Douglas City Commissioner Kentaiwon Durham agreed. “That’s what power and privilege do. It makes you feel as if you can do anything you want to do,” he said. “They thought they were above the law and above the Constitution.” Durham, who like Clark is Black, thought it would be “a whole different ballgame” if it were his face in the surveillance footage.
Douglas is a majority Black city, and the surrounding Coffee County is about 68% White and 29% Black. Like many places in the South, Black citizens have had to fight for democratic rights in court – repeatedly suing for representative districts for the election of local officials since the 1970s. In the late summer, it’s unbearably hot – so hot that if you sit outside too long people ask if you’re crazy. If you have a latent southern accent, the town will draw it out.
When CNN asked local people how to put the alleged election office breach in the broader context of voting rights in the county, nearly everyone suggested we speak to “Miss Livvy.” Olivia Coley-Pearson is a Douglas city commissioner, the first Black woman elected to the position. She’s a tall woman who wore a Barbie-pink blazer when we met, and like many others CNN spoke with in Coffee County, she saw the involvement of her county in the alleged Trump scheme as part of a long local pattern of voter suppression and intimidation.
“There’s power – a certain amount of power and control when you’re in certain offices,” Coley-Pearson told CNN. “Some people will do whatever it takes to maintain it. … And if it takes voter intimidation to do it, some people willing to intimidate to maintain that power and control.”
More details at the link.
Ron De Santis is such an asshole. Politico: DeSantis will not meet with Biden in Florida on Saturday.
Ron DeSantis will not meet Joe Biden on Saturday when the president comes to Florida to survey damage from Hurricane Idalia, the governor’s administration said Friday.
The governor’s office, in a statement, said the visit will disrupt recovery efforts.
Erzhena, the cat and the mobile phone. 2020, by Indira Baldano
“We don’t have any plans for the Governor to meet with the President tomorrow,” said Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ spokesperson, in a statement. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts.”
The White House on Friday night said the president and first lady Jill Biden will still travel to Florida Saturday, along with Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It remains unclear where and what time they will be in Florida.
“Their visit to Florida has been planned in close coordination with FEMA as well as state and local leaders to ensure there is no impact on response operations,” the White House said in a statement.
A White House official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the trip, said Biden informed DeSantis Thursday and the governor “did not express concerns at that time.”
As he was leaving Washington for Florida on Saturday morning, Biden said that he did not know what happened to the meeting, adding that “we are going to take care of Florida,” according to a pool report.
And Elon Musk is an even bigger asshole. Joseph Menn at The Washington Post: Musk’s new Twitter policies helped spread Russian propaganda, E.U. says.
Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has played a major role in allowing Russian propaganda about Ukraine to reach more people than before the war began, according to a study released this week by the European Commission, the governing body of the European Union.
The research found that, despite voluntary commitments to take action against Russian propaganda by the largest social media companies, including Meta, Russian disinformation against Ukraine, thrived. Allowing the disinformation and hate speech to spread without limits would have violated the Digital Services Act, the E.U.’s social media law, had it been in force last year, the year-long commission study concluded.
Vera and Lola, by Alberto Morrocco
“Over the course of 2022, the audience and reach of Kremlin-aligned social media accounts increased substantially all over Europe,” the study found. “Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.” The social media platform was recently renamed X.
The E.U. has taken a far more aggressive regulatory approach to government-backed disinformation than the United States has. The Digital Services Act, which went into effect for the biggest social media companies Aug. 25, requires them to assess the risk of false information,stop the worst from being boosted by algorithms and subject their performance to auditing. Separately, European sanctions on Russian state media have prompted YouTube and other platforms to ban the likes of RT, the Russian news outlet formerly known as Russia Today that was once one of the most-followed channels.
The study is the starkest indication yet that the legal and voluntary measures are not getting the job done, following June warnings from E.U. Commissioner Thierry Breton that X had work to do to avoid potentially massive fines under the DSA. The research was conducted by nonprofit analysis group Reset, which advocates for greater oversight of digital platforms.
Musk has also been retweeting white supremacist posts and actually allowed a white supremacist ad on the platform. Read more here:
Mashable: Elon Musk ‘likes’ trending #BanTheADL posts as white supremacist ad runs on platform.
Over the past 24 hours, the hashtag #BanTheADL has been trending on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The trending hashtag refers to the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish anti-extremism civil rights organization.
Even more concerning is that X owner Elon Musk has signaled support for the attacks against the ADL on the platform.
Within the same time frame, numerous X users have also reported being served an X-approved advertisement on the platform that promotes white supremacy.
Media Matters: Elon Musk again undermines X CEO Linda Yaccarino, reinforcing why advertisers can’t trust her promises about addressing hate speech.
After the Anti-Defamation League spoke with X’s new CEO about hate speech, Musk boosts anti-ADL posts from an antisemite he reinstated to the platform.
Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), “liked” and responded to posts from a known antisemite with ties to white nationalist Richard Spencer demanding that the Anti-Defamation League be banned from the platform after its CEO spoke with X’s Linda Yaccarino.
On August 30, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted that he had “a very frank + productive conversation” with Yaccarino and discussed what the platform needs to do “to address hate effectively on the platform.”
Following Greenblatt’s announcement, Keith Woods — an antisemitic YouTuber who has associated with Spencer and who was seemingly reinstated to the platform under Musk after previously being banned — posted that “the ADL is an anti-White organisation which waged financial terrorism against this platform as soon as Elon Musk took over in an attempt to stifle free speech. It’s time to #BanTheADL.”
In response, other right-wing figures and far-right accounts, including white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, promoted the hashtag, contributing to “#BanTheADL” trending nationally on the platform.
Musk was among those who interacted with the hashtag, “liking” one of Woods’ tweets claiming the ADL is “financially blackmailing social media companies into removing free speech.” Woods subsequently bragged that “Elon Musk likes my call to #BanTheADL” and appeared to take credit for the hashtag trending.
You can read lots more on Twitter (I will never call it X) if you’re interested.
That’s it for me. Have a great Labor Day weekend!!
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Posted: August 27, 2020 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Antony Fauci, Biogen Conference, CDC, coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19 testing guidelines, Donald Trump, FEMA, hurricane laura, Jacob Blake, Kenosha WI, Kyle Rittenhouse, Mike Pence, police brutality, Racism, Republican National Convention, Sturgis motorcycle rally, superspreader events |
Hurricane Laura damage in Lake Charles, LA
Good Morning!!
Hurricane Laura made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Louisiana overnight. I haven’t been able to find a lot of information on the damage so far. Right now Russel Honore is on MSNBC attacking the lack of action by FEMA. He explained that the areas that have been hit hardest are the poorest in the state; many live in mobile homes.
CBS News is posting live updates. The latest:
“Extremely dangerous” Hurricane Laura made landfall overnight near Cameron, Louisiana, bringing “catastrophic storm surge, extreme winds and flash flooding” to portions of the state, the National Hurricane Center said early Thursday. The storm had intensified rapidly into a Category 4 hurricane before slamming into the Gulf Coast near the Louisiana-Texas border.
Several hours after it came ashore, the storm was downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane, although the storm was still extremely dangerous. The hurricane center said life-threatening storm surge was continuing early Thursday along much of Louisiana’s coastline.
As of 7 a.m. local time, the storm was located about 20 miles north of Fort Polk, Louisiana, moving north at 15 mph. It was forecast to move across western and northern Louisiana through this afternoon and over Arkansas tonight, and become a tropical storm later on Thursday.
Trump recently took funds from FEMA to pay for his stupid executive orders.
Rolling Stone: Trump Looted $44 Billion From FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund in the Middle of a Record-Setting Hurricane Season.
…less than three weeks ago, instead of working with Congress to craft comprehensive legislation to address the ongoing crisis and deliver desperately-needed aid, President Trump looted FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund to the tune of $44 billion — authorizing the agency to pay for a $300 per week supplement to regular unemployment benefits.
The $300 a week benefit supplement is similar to the $600 one that was included in the CARES Act passed at the start of the pandemic. An extension of that $600 benefit was included in second relief package that the House has already approved, but that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t hold a vote on. And because the Senate won’t sign off on the House bill and Trump didn’t work with lawmakers to reach a compromise, the unemployment supplement isn’t coming from money appropriated by Congress. It’s coming from the government account meant to cover natural disasters like the one presently bearing down on Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
“I am extremely concerned about the health and safety of Americans when Hurricane Laura comes ashore,” Rep. Donald Payne, Jr. (D-NJ), head of the subcommittee on emergency preparedness, response, and recovery, said in a statement. “The fact that President Trump would take up to $44 billion from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund right before a possibly record-setting hurricane season shows his inability to protect our country during a crisis. If he had convinced his Senate allies to pass our Heroes Act, we would have extended unemployment benefits and still had plenty of money for FEMA and states to use to help Americans recover from a natural disaster, like Hurricane Laura.”
Meanwhile, Trump has been busy trying to reduce Covid-19 testing so that fewer cases will be discovered.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1298730938143305729?s=20
CNN: CDC was pressured ‘from the top down’ to change coronavirus testing guidance, official says.
A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN, and a key White House coronavirus task force member was not part of the meeting when the new guidelines were discussed.
“It’s coming from the top down,” the official said of the new directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was in surgery and not part of the discussion during the August 20 task force meeting when updated guidelines were discussed….
“I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is,” he said.
The new guidelines raise the bar on who should get tested, advising that some people without symptoms probably don’t need it — even if they’ve been in close contact with an infected person.
Previously, the CDC said viral testing was appropriate for people with recent or suspected exposure, even if they were asymptomatic.
CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Wednesday that changes to the testing guidelines were made after “updated recommendations” from the White House coronavirus task force.
This will lead to more cases and deaths, because people can transmit the virus when they are not yet having symptoms. Trump couldn’t care less how many Americans sicken and die as long as he has a chance of being reelected.
If this guidance is followed there will be more super-spreader events like this:
PharmaLive.com: Biogen Conference Led to 20,000 Covid-19 Cases, Study Suggests.
A Biogen corporate meeting held in Boston in March that was initially connected to about 100 cases of COVID-19 could have led to a significantly higher number of infections. A new study suggests the meeting could have contributed to about 20,000 cases across four Massachusetts counties.
A new, 64-page study that has not been peer-reviewed, extrapolates the number of infections that stemmed from the company’s corporate meeting held at the Marriott Long Wharf hotel in February, the early days of the pandemic in the United States. According to The Boston Globe, researchers studied the genetic makeup of confirmed COVID-19 cases from 772 patients in Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties in the Bay State and concluded the meeting was a super-spreader event that infected “tens of thousands.” Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and one of the researchers involved in the study told the Globe he is confident in the method used to reason out the high number of infections associated with the meeting.
The research team analyzed the genetic sequence of the 772 patients and identified more than 80 distinct SARS-CoV-2 genomes that plagued the Boston area through the month of May. The origin of most of the genomes in those patients could be identified as having come from Europe or other parts of the United States. But, as the Globe reports, one virus had a unique genetic signature found in 289 of those patients. That particular signature was traceable to the Biogen meeting in February, the researchers said.
“By multiplying the proportion of conference-related viral genomes in each of the four counties by the total number of coronavirus infections in Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk and Suffolk, the scientists estimate that 20,000 infections could be linked to the Marriott event,” the Globe reported.
According to WBUR, this event “Seeded 40% Of Boston Coronavirus Cases.”
Business Insider: The Sturgis motorcycle rally that experts warned would be a coronavirus superspreader event has been linked to 100 new cases in 8 states.
Cases stemming from the 460,000-person event, which kicked off on August 7, have now been spotted in eight states: Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Washington. That’s in addition to the cases spotted in South Dakota, where new cases spiked to 251 on August 22 and the seven-day average of new cases continues to climb. Altogether, the cases total more than 100, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Attendees have traveled to more than half of all the counties in the US since the festival wrapped up on August 16, according to anonymous cellphone data from Camber Systems, which was tracking their departures. CNN first reported the location data.
Ahead of the rally, as city officials said there was no way to stop people from coming even if the rally had been canceled in an official capacity, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem welcomed the event with open arms. She’s also voiced doubt about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines detailing the effectiveness of masks.
Once the revelers arrived, photos showed few masks and crowded bars, despite warning signs throughout the area. On stage at a packed concert, Smash Mouth’s lead singer mocked the pandemic: “We’re being human once again. F— that COVID s—,” he says in a video.
The crisis continues in Kenosha, Wisconsin after the police shooting of another innocent black man, Jacob Blake. Police in Illinois apprehended Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old boy who shot three protesters in Kenosha. Kenosha police failed to arrest Rittenhouse after the shooting even though he was approaching them with his hands up. He was white, so he was allowed to leave the state.
Rittenhouse was a Trump fan.
The Washington Post: An inescapable echo between Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the deaths of protesters in Kenosha.
If he was there at all, something prompted 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse to grab his rifle and make the short trip from his home in Antioch, Ill., to Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday. If photos shared on social media are accurate, something spurred him to walk around the town with that rifle in his hands as protests over a police shooting continued into the night. If police are correct that Rittenhouse fired that rifle, if he did shoot three protesters, killing two of them, there was something that caused him to be there to pull the trigger.
This alleged chain of events came from somewhere. Most 17-year-olds don’t see it as their duty to protect the streets of their hometowns, much less of nearby towns where they don’t even live. If Rittenhouse shot those two people dead, there was some spur for him to do so that simply doesn’t exist for most other people.
It’s facile to assume that we can identify that spur as the rhetoric offered by President Trump and his reelection campaign. But it’s impossible not to notice how that rhetoric echoes in what appears to have happened in Kenosha.
The night before those protesters were shot, five different speakers at the Republican National Convention, including the president’s son, decried uncontrolled violent mobs that they claim have taken over the nation’s streets.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha
The New York Times traced Rittenhouse’s movements on the day of the shootings:
Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident, appeared on multiple videos taken throughout the night by protesters and bystanders who chronicled the events as peaceful protests gave way to chaos, with demonstrators, armed civilians and others facing off against one another and the police in the darkened streets.
The New York Times’s Visual Investigations unit analyzed hours of footage to track Mr. Rittenhouse’s movements in the moments leading up to, and during, the shootings….
About two hours before the first shooting, the producer of a video livestream interviews Mr. Rittenhouse at a Kenosha vehicle dealership.
Mr. Rittenhouse is there at the same time as several other armed men. Some of them are positioned on the building’s roof overlooking the parking lot where vehicles were burned the day before.
In a brief exchange on the livestream, he identifies himself as “Kyle.”
Read the rest at the NYT link.
There is so much more news. I haven’t even touched on the DNC hate-fest, which concludes today. Last night’s episode focused on Mike Pence pretending that Trump has defeated the coronavirus and saved America.
CNN: Pence reinvents Trump’s presidency on a disorienting night of crises.
Only voters can decide the political fate of Donald Trump. But the evidence of a dark, dispiriting election year suggests unequivocally that the President has failed to find answers equal to the magnitude and complexity of America’s two great crises — over health and race.
So at the shape-shifting Republican National Convention on Wednesday, Trump’s most loyal subordinate Vice President Mike Pence had little option but to do what he does best. He twisted the facts, spun a more pleasing alternative national reality and showered his boss with praise.
Even by the standards of 2020, it was a disorienting night. Adding to the awfulness of another police shooting of a Black man and the shooting of two protesters (by an apparent Trump supporter) and the pandemic about to claim its 180,000th American victim, a monstrous hurricane tore towards the Gulf Coast.
Already, there are doubts whether the President’s big acceptance speech and a fireworks display Thursday at the White House in front of a pandemic-defying crowd of more than 1,000 people will be appropriate given what forecasters say are “unsurvivable” conditions facing those in the path of Hurricane Laura.
My guess is Trump won’t want his final night of glory postponed. Whether his advisers can convict him to do it is questionable.
I’ll post a few more stories in the comment thread. I hope anyone in the path of Laura will stay safe. Take care everyone!
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Posted: April 9, 2020 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: coronavirus, coronavirus in rural areas, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Eric Boehlert, federal seizures of medical equipment shipments, FEMA, medical equipment shortages, red states vs blue states, small town hospitals |
Five Puppies on the Carpet, by Edvard Munch
Good Morning!!
Yesterday Eric Boehlert asked an important question that the mainstream media never will: Memo to media: We still don’t know why Trump is doing this.
Why?
One month into our mounting crisis and we still don’t know why Trump won’t help key states secure desperately needed medical equipment to deal with the growing coronavirus pandemic. Or why Trump is touting a dubious miracle cure, fills marathon pandemic briefings with ceaseless contradictions and lies, and has silenced scientists. Why he purposefully ignored detailed intelligence warnings about Covid-19, placed his unqualified son-in-law in charge of a national emergency, and refused to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel private companies to manufacture needed medical supplies. Or why the government airlifted 18 tons of donated respirator masks, surgical masks, gowns and other medical supplies to China in February.
Woman with a dog, Fernando Botero, 1997
If Trump had done just one of these things, it would’ve been considered shortsighted and represented a shocking lack of leadership. Trump’s done them all. Yet that still doesn’t prompt most journalists to address the bigger picture and ask disturbing questions about a president who seems to be okay with watching America crumble and decay, in very real ways, on his watch.
As I stressed last week, the media’s preferred storyline that suggests Trump is simply incompetent doesn’t add up because Trump has made the wrong decision every single time in terms of how crises like this are supposed to be dealt with. (i.e. Be consistent, transparent, factual, and credible.) It’s increasingly not believable for the press to suggest Trump has been distracted or inept during this crisis, in part because of the level of White House uselessness has become so staggering.
Maybe Trump’s vengeful. Maybe he wants to wreck the economy to create investment opportunities? He’s under the thumb of a foreign entity? He wants to cause panic and cancel the November elections? He’s a fatalist? Who knows. And honestly, the specific “why” isn’t what matters now. What matters is asking the difficult questions and pondering what the Trump presidency is truly about, no matter what lurks in the shadows.
Read the rest at Press Run.
The evidence is piling up that Trump is helping red states and choosing to let people in blue states die because of equipment shortages.
Los Angeles Times: Hospitals say feds are seizing masks and other coronavirus supplies without a word.
Although President Trump has directed states and hospitals to secure what supplies they can, the federal government is quietly seizing orders, leaving medical providers across the country in the dark about where the material is going and how they can get what they need to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Pierre_Bonnard, Woman with Dog and Still Life, 1917
Hospital and clinic officials in seven states described the seizures in interviews over the past week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is not publicly reporting the acquisitions, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, nor has the administration detailed how it decides which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.
Officials who’ve had materials seized also say they’ve received no guidance from the government about how or if they will get access to the supplies they ordered. That has stoked concerns about how public funds are being spent and whether the Trump administration is fairly distributing scarce medical supplies.
“In order to have confidence in the distribution system, to know that it is being done in an equitable manner, you have to have transparency,” said Dr. John Hick, an emergency physician at Hennepin Healthcare in Minnesota who has helped develop national emergency preparedness standards through the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The medical leaders on the front lines of the fight to control the coronavirus and keep patients alive say they are grasping for explanations. “We can’t get any answers,” said a California hospital official who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the White House.
In Florida, a large medical system saw an order for thermometers taken away. And officials at a system in Massachusetts were unable to determine where its order of masks went.
“Are they stockpiling this stuff? Are they distributing it? We don’t know,” one official said. “And are we going to ever get any of it back if we need supplies? It would be nice to know these things.”
Maybe it’s not just blue states if it happened in Florida. So why are they doing this? We need explanations.
Another example from CNN: Colorado Democrat believes Trump awarded ventilators as political favor to vulnerable GOP senator.
Still Life With Puppies, Paul Gaugin
Rep. Diana DeGette, a veteran Democrat, said that President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would send 100 ventilators to Colorado smacks of a political favor to vulnerable GOP Sen. Cory Gardner after the federal government had not fulfilled the delegation’s request for the devices.
“I think this thing that happened with Sen. Gardner and President Trump is very disturbing,” the Colorado Democrat told CNN Wednesday evening. “What is the process here?”
DeGette said that while she wants the state to get every ventilator it can — after initially requesting 10,000 — the process employed by the White House shows that the President appears to be doling out the ventilators to his allies at a time when the virus is affecting people of all political persuasions.
“It seems that way to me,” DeGette said when asked if it appeared to be a political favor to Gardner. “I was totally outraged.”
DeGette said that the decision to award 100 ventilators followed a tortured process after the state’s delegation and Democratic Gov. Jared Polis had been asking for 10,000 ventilators.
But while they were waiting for an answer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Polis reached a deal with a private company for 500 ventilators to be sent to the state. Once FEMA got word of the state deal, the federal agency stepped in to prevent that contract from going through so it could acquire the ventilators instead, Polis said on CNN last week.
Gardner then called Trump on Tuesday night, and the President tweeted Wednesday that the state would get 100 ventilators from the federal stockpile at the Republican senator’s request. Gardner is one of the most vulnerable Republican senators up for reelection.
Trump seems to think that rural areas will not be overwhelmed by coronavirus infections, but the places where most Trump voters live will likely be the next hot spots, and they aren’t likely to be as prepared as the big cities.
Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly: Some Coronavirus Hot Spots Are in Rural America.
Pablo Picasso, Woman with a dog
Most of the reporting on coronavirus has focused on its spread in major urban areas, especially New York City. But I was spurred into looking at what is happening in rural America by the fact that the “hot spot” in my home state of Minnesota is not the Twin Cities metro area. The disease has taken hold in the city of Fairmont, which is located in Martin County—an agricultural community in the southwestern part of the state.
While the number of cases and deaths related to coronavirus in Martin County is fairly low (34 cases and 4 deaths), it dwarfs those in the metro counties on a per capita basis. For example, per 100,000 people, Martin County’s numbers represent 170 cases and 20 deaths, compared to 17 cases and 0.7 deaths per 100,000 in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis.
No one knows why this virus has taken hold in Martin County, but that hasn’t stopped speculation. Here is what Tim Langer, public health sanitarian with Martin County Human Services, ventured.
“My personal opinion is there are some folks listening to some media outlets that were not taking this seriously. That can be a factor, too. It’s hard to prove that. I don’t want to get political. But there were outlets saying it’s a hoax, it’s no worse than a cold, and those are things people listen to.”
Martin County, Minnesota isn’t the only rural area that is facing a coronavirus outbreak. In hotspots like Blaine County, Idaho and Eagle County, Colorado, the explanation is clear: rich ski towns have some of the highest infection rates in the country. But what explains the fact that Greer County, Oklahoma is the hot spot of that state, with an infection rate of 520 and death rate of 50 per 100,000?
Click the link to read the rest.
Susan on a balcony holding a dog, Mary Cassatt
NPR: Small-Town Hospitals Are Closing Just As Coronavirus Arrives In Rural America.
By this time next week, Decatur County, Tenn., will have lost its only hospital, Decatur County General, which has been serving the rural community of about 12,000 people along the Tennessee River since 1963.
The hospital’s human resources director, Melinda Hays-Kirkwood, has already begun laying off people, and she says by next week only a skeleton staff will remain….
The closure will have a huge economic toll locally — with more than 100 on staff, the hospital was one of the county’s largest employers. But the ironic timing isn’t lost on its staff either. Because of the COVID-19 crisis, most nonessential businesses in the area were already closed.
“It’s a difficult time to be shutting down a hospital in the middle of the coronavirus,” Hays-Kirkwood says.
There are currently no known cases in Decatur County, but she says every county around it has reported infections.
Small-town hospitals were already closing at an alarming rate before the COVID-19 pandemic. But now the trend appears to be accelerating just as the disease arrives in rural America. When Decatur County General Hospital shuts down indefinitely by April 15, it will be the ninth small-town hospital to close in 2020 alone. According to a report released this month by the Chartis Center for Rural Health, nearly half of rural hospitals were already operating in the red before the COVID-19 crisis.
What will happen when it becomes clear that Trump is killing his own supporters? Lloyd Green at The Guardian, April 5: ‘Trump is killing his own supporters’ – even White House insiders know it.
On Sunday, initially at least, there was no White House briefing on the president’s public schedule. But the bad news kept coming. Coronavirus deaths continued to climb and reports of the heartland being unprepared for what may be on its horizon continued to ricochet around the media.
In the words of one administration insider, to the Guardian: “The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He’s killing his own supporters.”
By Edouard Vuillard
Members of the national guard, emergency workers, rank-and-file Americans: all are exposed. Yet Trump appears incapable of emoting anything that comes close to heart-felt concern. Or just providing straight answers.
Rather, he is acting like Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America: repeatedly letting governors know the burden of shoring up their sick, their doctors and their people falls on their shoulders first. The national government? It’s the world’s greatest backstop.
Remember when the Republican party freaked out about Barack Obama and the US “leading from behind” abroad? Remember the howls that evoked from GOP leaders? Those days are gone. Welcome to what Martin O’Malley, a Democratic former governor of Maryland, calls the “Darwinian approach to federalism”.
Trump is telling NFL owners he wants the season to start on time. He is disregarding Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advice on wearing facemasks in public. And he is touting untested coronavirus cures live on national TV.
Think Trump University on steroids, only this time we all stand to be the victims.
When Dr Anthony Fauci says there is no evidence to back up Trump’s claims surrounding hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, pay attention. The fact Jared Kushner is on the case is hardly reassuring. He’s the guy who thought firing James Comey was win-win politics and promised Middle East peace in our time.
While all this is going on, the Wisconsin Republican party is giving America a taste of the campaign to come in the fall. Right now, the Badger State GOP is fighting in the US supreme court efforts to extend mail-in voting for this Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
In other words, voters will be forced to choose between foregoing their rights and risking their lives. Democracy shouldn’t work that way.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
What’s happening where you live? And what stories are you following today?
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