Category: 2020 Election

Trump’s unpaid security bills are finally catching up with him as Florida sheriff reveals he can’t secure RNC convention

AlterNet logoRepublicans have one month to pull off their convention in Florida, where the coronavirus has gotten so bad that some municipalities are starting to talk about shutting down again.

Politico reported Monday that the sheriff of Jacksonville, Florida is in a particularly difficult spot as the convention day approaches. He explained that the “lack of clear plans, adequate funding and enough law enforcement officers” means he can no longer provide security for the event.

“As we’re talking today, we are still not close to having some kind of plan that we can work with that makes me comfortable that we’re going to keep that event and the community safe,” said Duval County Sheriff Mike Williams. “It’s not my event to plan, but I can just tell you that what has been proposed in my opinion is not achievable right now … from a law enforcement standpoint, from a security standpoint.” Continue reading.

Trump threatens to veto GOP relief bill unless it includes payroll tax cut that favors the rich

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump threatened to veto the Republican coronavirus relief proposal unless it includes a payroll tax cut, which would overwhelmingly benefit the rich and potentially cut funding for Social Security and Medicare.

Trump confirmed reports about his push to include a payroll tax holiday in an interview with Fox News that first aired on Sunday.

“I would consider not signing it if we don’t have a payroll tax cut,” Trump said, claiming that “a lot of Republicans like it.” Continue reading.

Michael Cohen’s book to allege Trump made racist comments about Obama and Nelson Mandela, lawsuit says

Washington Post logoNEW YORK — The book manuscript being drafted by President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen alleges that Trump has made racist comments about his predecessor Barack Obama and the late South African leader Nelson Mandela, according to court filings made public Monday night that contend Cohen was sent back to prison this month as retaliation for seeking to publish his memoir before November’s election.

The lawsuit seeks Cohen’s immediate release from federal custody. He was rearrested July 9, less than two months after he was approved to serve the remainder of his sentence on home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic. His attorneys allege that Cohen’s First Amendment rights were violated when he was detained at the federal courthouse in Manhattan during a meeting with probation officers, who had asked him to sign a gag order prohibiting him from speaking to the media or publishing a book while serving the rest of his sentence.

Cohen’s suit names Attorney General William P. Barr and Federal Bureau of Prisons officials, in their official capacities. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York, and an initial hearing was scheduled for Thursday. Continue reading.

Trump says we’re doing better than ‘most other countries’ on coronavirus. Not even close.

Washington Post logoAs President Trump prepares to rekindle his coronavirus briefings, he appears to have landed on a new talking point: Three times in three days, President Trump has downplayed the outbreak in the United States by suggesting that other countries’ even-worse problems are being ignored.

He might want to rethink that comparison.

“You know, it’s not just this country; it’s many countries,” Trump told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “We don’t talk about it in the news. They don’t talk about Mexico and Brazil and still parts of Europe — which actually got hit sooner than us, so it’s a little ahead of us in that sense. But you take a look, why don’t they talk about Mexico?” Continue reading.

Democrats Warn of Possible Foreign Disinformation Plot Targeting Congress

New York Times logoDemocrats demanded an F.B.I. briefing. They were concerned about a potential Russian-linked effort to interfere in the election by using a Senate panel to advance smears against Joe Biden, officials said.

Top congressional Democrats warned in a cryptic letter they released on Monday that a foreign power was using disinformation to try to interfere in the presidential election and the activities of Congress, and demanded a prompt briefing by the F.B.I. to warn every member of Congress.

While the letter writers, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, did not specify the threat, officials familiar with a classified addendum attached to it said the Democrats’ concerns touched on intelligence related to a possible Russian-backed attempt to smear the presidential campaign of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

They contend that the Russian-linked information is being funneled to a committee headed by Senator Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who is investigating Mr. Biden and his son, who was once paid as a board member of a Ukrainian energy company. While neither Mr. Johnson’s inquiry nor much of the information in question is new, the Democrats’ letter is an attempt to call attention to their concern that the accusations are not only unfounded but may further Russia’s efforts to interfere again in the American presidential election. Continue reading.

The virus and the fabulist in chief in the White House

We urgently need to change course on our federal response, but Trump remains the King of Denial

The Chris Wallace interview of Donald Trump on Fox News offered so many low points that you would think it was conducted in Death Valley rather than on a steamy White House patio.

For starters, Trump, like the leader of a military junta, refused to say whether he would accept the results of a democratic election if he lost. The president also burbled about his mental acuity based on a test in which one of the questions was identifying a drawing of an elephant.

But perhaps the most alarming moment came when Trump —displaying his characteristic scientific rigor — once again peddled dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus. Continue reading.

The dubious deployment of armed enforcers within the U.S. is central to Trump’s politics

Washington Post logoThere are constant protests in New York City.

Meaning daily. It’s a city of millions, including a large number of activists and activist organizations. There are labor protests, antiwar protests, protests focused on foreign policy, protests aimed at arcane legal changes, demonstrations about housing laws, demonstrations leveraging whatever happens to be in the news. At times those protests are massive, a coalescing of activism around a common theme, as they were following the death of George Floyd earlier this year after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. But even when the protests don’t involve tens of thousands of people, they exist as an undercurrent.

For several days, the protests in May and June over Floyd’s death spiraled into something else. As happened in other places in the same period, groups of looters and vandals used the protests as a jumping-off point for theft and property damage. That quickly faded. When the protests shifted to focus attention on tributes to leaders of the former Confederacy and those who had participated in the slave trade, New York — not exactly a hotbed of Confederate nostalgia — was not an epicenter. City leaders did agree to remove a statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside a museum, but that was more because of the presentation of the statue itself than anger at Roosevelt specifically. Continue reading.

Trump’s gripes about Fauci: A guide

Washington Post logoOver and over, the president has the same three complaints about Anthony S. Fauci, the renowned director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The three items of dispute all appeared in the Chris Wallace interview, but they have popped up in various interviews since April.

As one would expect, Trump’s memory is faulty. Here’s a guide to his gripes.

‘Dr. Fauci at the beginning said, “This will pass.” ’

Trump often projects his insecurities, and one of his biggest political problems now is that many Americans believe he did not take the emergence of the coronavirus seriously. For weeks in January, February and half of March, Trump played down the threat of the new virus, insisting it would disappear on its own.

Trump Threatens to Send Federal Law Enforcement Forces to More Cities

New York Times logoAs federal agents patrol Portland and head to Chicago, Democrats call the president’s plan “an American crisis,” barely 100 days before the election.

WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to deploy federal law enforcement to Chicago and threatened on Monday to send agents to other major cities — all controlled by Democrats.

Governors and other officials reacted angrily to the president’s move, calling it an election-year ploy as they squared off over crime, civil liberties and local control that has spread from Portland, Ore., across the country.

With camouflage-clad agents already sweeping through the streets of Portland, more units were poised to head to Chicago, and Mr. Trump suggested that he would follow suit in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and other urban centers. Governors and other officials compared his actions to authoritarianism and vowed to pursue legislation or lawsuits to stop him. Continue reading.

Trump seizes on Bush-era torture memo author’s call for extralegal executive authority: ‘Intellectual bankruptcy’

AlterNet logoProgressives are raising alarm after news Sunday that President Donald Trump is reportedly looking to move forward with a series of extralegal maneuvers to further his agenda by bypassing Congress with use of a legal argument from John Yoo, the lawyer notorious for- helping craft the justification of torture in the George W. Bush administration.

“The fun part is that Yoo frames this as ‘making it easy for presidents to break the law,’” tweeted journalist David Dayen “and Trump jumps on it and says ‘yes let’s do that.’”

According to Axios, which broke the news of the new White House strategy Sunday evening, the president is relying on a legal argument in an article Yoo wrote in June for the National Review after the Supreme Court’s Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California ruling. Continue reading.