Tag: Trump weakening American democracy
How Trump Exploited The Legal Infrastructure To Advance Fascism In America
The debate over whether Donald Trump is a fascist is no longer confined to a narrow segment of the far left. It is now out in the open. Even mainstream columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldbergand the Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor and influential Democratic politicians, such as Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, have come to use the “F” word to describe our 45th commander in chief.
Although it is an emotionally loaded and often misused term, fascism is as real today as a political and cultural force, a set of core beliefs, and a mode of governance as it was when Benito Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party in 1919 and declared himself dictator six years later.
Nor is fascism a foreign phenomenon restricted to South American banana republics or failed European states. As University of London professor Sarah Churchwell explained in a June 22 essay published in the New York Review of Books, fascism has deep roots in the United States, spanning the decades from the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s to the rise of the German-American Bund in the 1930s, the ascendance of Depression-era demagogues like Huey Long, and the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Continue reading.
Appeals court seems wary of ordering dismissal of Flynn case
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in Washington appeared inclined Tuesday to let a judge decide on his own whether to grant the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the criminal case against former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Many members of the court expressed repeated skepticism at arguments from the Justice Department and Flynn’s attorneys that a judge was not empowered to probe the motives behind the government’s decision to abandon the prosecution of Flynn, who pleaded guilty as part of the special counsel’s Russia investigation to lying to the FBI.
The nearly four hours of arguments were the latest step in a long-running legal saga that has prompted an extraordinary power struggle between the executive and judicial branches. The case will almost certainly persist for months if the court rejects Flynn’s efforts to get a speedy dismissal and returns it to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who refused to immediately grant the department’s request to drop the prosecution. Continue reading.
The Trump administration’s no-blanks policy is the latest Kafkaesque plan designed to curb immigration
What do you do if immigrants learn how to navigate the latest booby trap you’ve set for them?
If you’re the Trump administration, you set that trap for someone else those immigrants must rely on — such as law enforcement or medical personnel, who submit evidence for certain visa applications.
Last fall, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services introduced perhaps its most arbitrary, absurd modification yet to the immigration system: It began rejecting applications unless every single field was filled in, even those that obviously did not pertain to the applicant. Continue reading.
Attacks On Postal Service Hurt Democracy — And That’s The Point
Donald Trump continues to both demonize the idea of vote by mail and dismantle the U.S. Postal Service, and it’s making a predictable mess. The House Oversight and Reform Committee is calling new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to testify about changes to the Postal Service, but they’re letting that testimony wait until September 17, because apparently this isn’t super urgent, even though “While these changes in a normal year would be drastic, in a presidential election year when many states are relying heavily on absentee mail-in ballots, increases in mail delivery timing would impair the ability of ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner—an unacceptable outcome for a free and fair election,” as committee Chair Carolyn Maloney wrote to DeJoy.
But while the concrete damage Trump is doing to the on-time delivery of mail in this country is a disaster, the effects of his constant ranting against mail voting on his fellow Republicans are kind of hilarious. Because the thing is, more Republicans than Democrats traditionally mail in their ballots … or did, until Trump went to work.
Local Republican Party organizations and officials are desperately trying to reassure their voters that it’s okay to vote by mail. Continue reading.
DHS official whose office compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists and protesters has been removed from his job
A senior Department of Homeland Security official whose office compiled “intelligence reports” about journalists and protesters in Portland, Ore., has been removed from his job, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Brian Murphy, the acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, was reassigned to a new position elsewhere in the department, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.
Acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf made the decision on Friday, one person said. Continue reading.
More Than Just a Tweet: Trump’s Campaign to Undercut Democracy
Floating the idea of delaying the election was the latest step in the president’s running effort to discredit the election, risking long-term damage to public trust in the system.
Nothing in the Constitution gives President Trump the power to delay the November election, and even fellow Republicans dismissed it out of hand when he broached it on Thursday. But that was not the point. With a possible defeat looming, the point was to tell Americans that they should not trust their own democracy.
The idea of putting off the vote was the culmination of months of discrediting an election that polls suggest Mr. Trump is currently losing by a wide margin. He has repeatedly predicted “RIGGED ELECTIONS” and a “substantially fraudulent” vote and “the most corrupt election in the history of our country,” all based on false, unfounded or exaggerated claims.
It is the kind of language resonant of conspiracy theorists, cranks and defeated candidates, not an incumbent living in the White House. Never before has a sitting president of the United States sought to undermine public faith in the election system the way Mr. Trump has. He has refused to commit to respecting the results and, even after his election-delay trial balloon was panned by Republican allies, he raised the specter on Thursday evening of months of lawsuits challenging the outcome. Continue reading.
DHS compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists who published leaked documents
The Department of Homeland Security has compiled “intelligence reports” about the work of American journalists covering protests in Portland, Ore., in what current and former officials called an alarming use of a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors.
Over the past week, the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies and others, summarizing tweets written by two journalists — a reporter for theNew York Times and the editor in chief of the blog Lawfare — and noting they had published leaked, unclassified documents about DHS operations in Portland. The intelligence reports, obtained by The Washington Post, include written descriptions and images of the tweets and the number of times they had been liked or retweeted by others.
After The Post published a story online Thursday evening detailing the department’s practices, the acting homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, ordered the intelligence office to stop collecting information on journalists and announced an investigation into the matter. Continue reading.
DFL Party Statement on Trump’s Push to Delay the 2020 Election
SAINT PAUL, Minnesota – Today, Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin issued the following statement on Donald Trump’s push to delay the 2020 elections:
“Let’s be clear about what’s happening here: President Trump is suggesting we delay the 2020 election almost immediately after the United States surpassed 150,000 deaths due to COVID-19 and suffered the worst economic nosedive in American history. Continue reading “DFL Party Statement on Trump’s Push to Delay the 2020 Election”
The echoes of Hong Kong in Portland
The protesters are defiant. They equip themselves with makeshift protective gear, donning bicycle helmets, gas masks and goggles while wielding umbrellas as shields. Some have repurposed household tools like leafblowers to help against tear gas and other projectiles fired into the crowds. Others assemble ramshackle barricades and shine laser pointers to disrupt the scopes of the heavily armed security forces. Authorities brand them vandals and “rioters.” But the crackdowns that ensued only galvanized further dissent.
That’s how the script read for months of unrest that gripped Hong Kong last year. But it has also been on view in recent weeks in the West Coast city of Portland, Ore., the site of an intensifying showdown between demonstrators and the Trump administration. Over the weekend, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in cities across the country, from Los Angeles to Omaha to Seattle. In some instances, they clashed with police and federal security forces, leading to arrests.
Portland, though, has become ground zero of a new phase in the United States’ summer of discontent. The city, as my colleagues noted, has “a long tradition of protest as a subculture of anarchism.” Petty street skirmishes there between far-right and anti-fascist groups have inflamed American social media in recent years. Their reelection prospects narrowing, President Trump and his Republican allies have seized upon the disturbances in the Pacific Northwest as a parable for what the American left supposedly has in store for the rest of the country. As a result, Portland has become the first battleground in an apparent nationwide surge of federal agents deployed to big cities with the White House’s prodding — and without local approval. Continue reading.