Public Health Experts Stunned By Trump Flack’s Attempt To Censor CDC Reports

Days after President Donald Trump admitted to knowingly downplaying the Covid-19 pandemic in his statements to the public, new reporting late Friday revealed that Trump political aides have been reviewing—and in some cases altering—weekly CDC reports about the deadly virus in an effort to bring them into closer alignment with the president’s false narrative and claims.

Politico reported Friday evening that the Health and Human Services Department’s politically appointed communications aides, led by former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo—a Republican strategist with no medical expertise—”have attempted to add caveats to the CDC’s findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior.”

The primary target of the Trump officials’ interference, according to Politico, has been the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), a crucial resource for experts, public officials, and members of the public seeking to track the spread of Covid-19. While CDC officials have pushed back on meddling from political appointees, Politico reported that the agency has “increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording.” Continue reading.

A Secret Recording Reveals Oil Executives’ Private Views on Climate Change

New York Times logo

At a meeting last year, industry leaders contradicted public claims that emissions of climate-warming methane are under control

Last summer, oil and gas-industry groups were lobbying to overturn federal rules on leaks of natural gas, a major contributor to climate change. Their message: The companies had emissions under control.

In private, the lobbyists were saying something very different.

At a discussion convened last year by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a group that represents energy companies, participants worried that producers were intentionally flaring, or burning off, far too much natural gas, threatening the industry’s image, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times. Continue reading.

The Destructive Cult That’s Eating The Republican Party Alive

For a certain kind of Republican, it is hard to imagine anything worse than the party founded by Abraham Lincoln transmogrified into the party of Donald Trump. Some of those Republicans have openly abandoned the once Grand Old Party, while others quietly await a reform or restoration. Only a few have acknowledged so far that the authoritarian and racist trends in their party cannot be blamed on Trump alone and were visible well before he took over.

Yet as awful and dangerous as Trump undeniably is, there may be something worse ahead for Republicans. That thing is called QAnon, the online phenomenon that has declared war on an international conspiracy of elitist pedophiles and cannibals, which, of course, doesn’t exist.

The burgeoning movement, supposedly directed by a mysterious government official known as Q, already has established itself as an alternative source of authority within the Republican Party. Congressional candidates who support or endorse QAnon, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia, are likely to be sent to Washington from solidly Republican districts where they won primaries. It is astonishing to realize that nearly 80 QAnon supporters stood for election in this cycle, nearly all of them Republicans. Continue reading.

Trump Pressed for Plasma Therapy. Officials Worry, Is an Unvetted Vaccine Next?

New York Times logo

New details of how the president has demanded faster action from health agencies help explain the intensifying concern that he could demand pre-Election Day approval of a vaccine.

WASHINGTON — It was the third week of August, the Republican National Convention was days away, and President Trump was impatient.

White House officials were anxious to showcase a step forward in the battle against the coronavirus: an expansion of the use of blood plasma from recovered patients to treat new ones. For nearly two weeks, however, the National Institutes of Health had held up emergency authorization for the treatment, citing lingering concerns over its effectiveness.

So on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Mr. Trump called Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., with a blunt message.

“Get it done by Friday,” he demanded. Continue reading.

Trump’s war on immigrants is hurting his fight against China

Washington Post logo

They have more people. Until we do, too, it will be hard to contain Beijing.

One of the only Trump-era policy initiatives to secure bipartisan support has been the president’s decision to reverse America’s “engagement” with China and instead try to decouple the world’s two largest economies. Both parties see an emerging strategic competitor as China lifts its gross domestic product and productivity, recruits allies, silences political opponents, and tries to absorb semiautonomous territories like Taiwan and Hong Kong. One of the greatest conundrums in Washington is how U.S. officials can counterbalance Beijing’s rise.

At the same time, President Trump has been pursuing an immigration policy supported by only his own party, seeking to foreclose the flow not just of undocumented migrants but also those who come here legally.

These two policies are at odds with each other. The best way to ensure that the United States maintains the upper hand against China is easy: It can welcome more of the tens of millions around the world who’d like to move to our shores — not as an act of charity but as an exertion of national power. To compete, we need more people. Continue reading.

Trump Onslaught Against Biden Falls Short of a Breakthrough

New York Times logo

President Trump has leveled scathing law-and-order attacks on Joseph Biden for weeks. But a new poll shows Mr. Biden ahead in three states Mr. Trump hopes to pick up, and maintaining a lead in Wisconsin.

President Trump’s weekslong barrage against Joseph R. Biden Jr. has failed to erase the Democrat’s lead across a set of key swing states, including the crucial battleground of Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump’s law-and-order message has rallied support on the right but has not swayed the majority of voters who dislike him, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.

Mr. Biden, the former vice president, leads Mr. Trump by five percentage points in Wisconsin and by a wider, nine-point margin in neighboring Minnesota, a Democratic-leaning state that Mr. Trump has been seeking to flip with his vehement denunciations of rioting and crime.

The president has improved his political standing in Wisconsin in particular with an insistent appeal to Republican-leaning white voters alarmed by local unrest. But in both Midwestern states, along with the less-populous battlegrounds of Nevada and New Hampshire, Mr. Trump has not managed to overcome his fundamental political vulnerabilities — above all, his deep unpopularity with women and the widespread view among voters that he has mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading.

Twitter Tags Another Trump Post, This Time Over Potentially Encouraging Voter Fraud

The president previously had a post tagged for seemingly attempting to interfere with the election process.

Donald Trump on Saturday had another post tagged by Twitter, this time for potentially encouraging voter fraud.

“We placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice,” Twitter explained after the president posted: “NORTH CAROLINA: To make sure your Ballot COUNTS, sign & send it in EARLY. When Polls open, go to your Polling Place to see if it was COUNTED. IF NOT, VOTE! Your signed Ballot will not count because your vote has been posted. Don’t let them illegally take your vote away from you!”

Twitter further explained, “To protect people on Twitter, we err on the side of limiting the circulation of Tweets which advise people to take actions which could be illegal in the context of voting or result in the invalidation of their votes.” Continue reading.

Trump leans into foreign policy amid domestic disapproval

The Hill logo

President Trump is leaning into his administration’s foreign policy accomplishments as he faces a difficult battle for reelection against Democratic nominee Joe Biden on domestic issues.

Over the past month, Trump has helped broker a peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, facilitate normalized economic ties between Serbia and Kosovo, and reduce troop levels in Iraq. On Friday, he announced that Bahrain also would be normalizing diplomatic ties with Israel.

The White House has touted the moves as examples of the president delivering on his agenda and leading as he faces widespread disapproval from Americans for his handling of the coronavirus, which has claimed almost 200,000 lives in the U.S. Continue reading.

The advantages of incumbency are crumbling away for Trump

Washington Post logo

President Trump had a bad week: That was the week before last. He had another one this past week. For someone trailing former vice president Joe Biden in the presidential race, Trump remains the biggest obstacle to reelection, an embattled incumbent who is frittering away the advantages of incumbency.

The week before last it was an article in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg that portrayed the president using derogatory language about military personnel killed or wounded in action. It was based on several unnamed sources, and Trump — and others now or formerly in the administration — vigorously disputed the account. Prominently absent from those publicly defending Trump were former defense secretary Jim Mattis and, critically, former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly.

This past week it was an entirely different issue for the president — a self-inflicted problem that was the result of his many hours of taped, on-the-record conversations with Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, whose book “Rage” will be published this week. Continue reading.

In Visiting a Charred California, Trump Confronts a Scientific Reality He Denies

New York Times logo

A president who has mocked climate change and pushed policies that accelerate it is set to be briefed on the scorched earth and ash-filled skies that experts say are the predictable result.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump flies to California on Monday to assess the state’s raging forest fires, he will come face to face with the grim consequences of a reality he has stubbornly refused to accept: the devastating effects of a warming planet.

To the global scientific community, the acres of scorched earth and ash-filled skies across the American West are the tragic, but predictable, result of accelerating climate change. Nearly two years ago, federal government scientists concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels could triple the frequency of severe fires across the Western states.

But the president has used his time in the nation’s highest office to aggressively promote the burning of fossil fuels, chiefly by rolling back or weakening every major federal policy intended to combat dangerous emissions. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his senior environmental officials have regularly mocked, denied or minimized the established science of human-caused climate change. Continue reading.