Tag: Trump white supremacy

The Daily 202: Trump’s ugly pattern of attacking urban areas spotlights failure to act like president for all Americans

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After a hand recount of nearly 5 million ballots, and an audit that found no fraud or irregularities, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state announced Thursday night that President-elect Joe Biden beat President Trump in the state by 12,284 votes.

Multiple factors can be described as decisive when a race is so close, but here is one to consider: John Lewis represented Clayton County in Congress from 1986 until he diedfrom pancreatic cancer in July. In 2016, Hillary Clinton garnered 75,908 from Clayton, which is just south of downtown Atlanta and includes the city’s airport. In 2020, Biden won with 95,232 votes from Clayton.

Trump set the tone for his relationship with urban America in January 2017 when he ripped Lewis for declining to attend his inauguration by saying that the civil rights legend was “all talk” and “no action.” This was a ludicrous line of attack: Only one of these men was nearly beaten to death by police for protesting racial injustice, and it was not Trump. Continue reading.

Trump administration revives talk of action on birthright citizenship

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The Trump administration has revived discussions around taking executive action targeting birthright citizenship in its final weeks before leaving office, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

President Trump has spoken throughout his first term about ending birthright citizenship. Drafts of a possible order have been circulating for some time, and there is now internal discussion about finalizing it before the Biden administration takes over in January, sources said.

The administration is aware the order would be promptly challenged in court, but officials would hope to get a ruling on whether birthright citizenship is protected under the 14th Amendment, according to one source familiar with the plans. Many lawmakers and experts have argued it is protected, but the courts have not definitively ruled on the issue. Continue reading.

Trump’s legal fight targets Black Americans

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President Trump‘s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election through legal action have become increasingly focused on throwing out votes in cities in key electoral battlegrounds, a development that would impact significant Black populations.

The efforts have prompted a strong pushback, particularly in Michigan, a center of this week’s fight.

“You could see the racism in the behavior last night,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan (D) said Wednesday morning after two GOP Trump allies on the Board of Canvassers for Wayne County — home to Detroit, the country’s largest predominantly Black city — had initially refused to certify the county’s election results, claiming widespread voting fraud in Motor City. Continue reading.

Kenosha: How two men’s paths crossed in an encounter that has divided the nation

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Kyle Rittenhouse, in a jailhouse interview, said he used stimulus money to get a gun. The first man he shot had just left a psychiatric hospital.

In a summer roiled by protests for racial justice, Kenosha, Wis., moved into the national spotlight in August after a White police officer shot a Black man named Jacob Blake seven times in the back.

Peaceful protests during the day were followed by rioting and civil unrest at night. Just before midnight on Aug. 25, tensions peaked when a 17-year-old named Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum. Moments later, Rittenhouse shot two other men, one fatally.

Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with multiple counts of homicide and weapons offenses, but right-wing groups have rallied to his cause, celebrating him as a hero who sought to protect Kenosha from destructive rioting and who fired in self-defense. The events have become a litmus test for a deeply divided nation. Continue reading.

Hate Crimes in U.S. Rose to Highest Level in More Than a Decade in 2019

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An F.B.I. report on hate crimes also found that more murders motivated by hate were recorded in 2019 than in any year before.

Hate crimes in the United States rose to their highest level in more than a decade last year, while more murders motivated by hate were recorded than ever before, the F.B.I. said on Monday.

The sharp rise in homicides driven by hatred — there were 51 last year, according to the F.B.I. — was attributed in large part to the mass shooting in El Paso in August 2019. In that shooting, the authorities say a 21-year-old gunman motivated by hatred toward Latinos stormed a Walmart and killed 23 people and injured many more.

The death toll in the El Paso attack more than doubled that of 2018’s deadliest hate-motivated crime, the mass shooting targeting Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Continue reading.

Militia Groups, Conspiracy Theorists Rally In D.C. For Election Loser Donald Trump

President Donald Trump briefly waved to the crowd from his motorcade on his way to go golfing.

Demonstrators as part of a “Million MAGA March” swarmed Washington, D.C., on Saturday in a show of support for President Donald Trump, whose loss to President-elect Joe Biden was determined exactly a week ago.

The protest didn’t quite live up to its name, however.

A few thousand Trump supporters ― many of them unmasked ― did show up to Freedom Plaza in a show of solidarity with the president, who has spent the last week desperately seeking to overturn the results of the election by falsely claiming widespread voter fraud, but the number of marchers fell way short of the “more than one million” falsely touted by the Trump administration on Saturday afternoon.  Continue reading.

Trump put up walls to immigrants, with stinging rhetoric and barriers made of steel and regulation

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President Trump has at times spoken favorably of immigrants during the past four years, echoing conventional Republican praises for those who arrive in the United States legally. But in his less scripted moments, like at a rally in Minnesota in late September, Trump’s words fully align with the policies he has put in place, and something electric happens between the president and his supporters.

The event took place as the Trump administration prepared to cut the number of refugees eligible for admission into the country to 15,000, the lowest level since 1980. The president told the audience that his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, would reverse that and “turn Minnesota into a refugee camp.”

The crowd hissed and booed. The president stood basking in the sound, a throng of Americans jeering at immigrants who seek shelter in the United States legally, fleeing religious persecution, torture, genocide. Continue reading.

Militia Leader Says His ’Troops’ Will Appear Armed At Polling Places, Ready For ‘Civil War’

Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes said members of his militia will be at polling locations on Election Day to “protect” Trump voters during an appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ program.

After making that claim, Rhodes made a number of unhinged statements, including saying Oath Keepers would follow directives from President Donald Trump to take members of the “deep state” into custody and “do what we have to do,” that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act before the election, that Oath Keepers will “be in range” of Washington D.C., to stop a “Benghazi-style” attack on the White House on election night, and that a war will have to be fought against Democrats on the West Coast who are “bought” by the Chinese government. Rhodes also hyped the possibility of a second civil war where his “battle-hardened” supporters kill the “street soldiers” and “command and control” of “the radical left.” He later claimed the United States is already in a civil war because “you have sitting politicians who are part of the enemy’s ranks.”

Disturbingly, Rhodes telegraphed how he will interpret election results, saying that he would consider a win by Democratic nominee Joe Biden illegitimate and evidence the election had been stolen, presaging how he and his militia might react to that outcome. Continue reading.

The White Supremacist And Extremist Donors To Trump’s 2020 Campaign

His reelection campaign has not rejected or returned campaign contributions from multiple well-known far-right bigots, FEC records show.

President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign has repeatedly accepted donations from well-known white supremacists, extremists and bigots, Federal Election Commission records show. 

Among the far-right figures who have given money to Trump’s reelection bid are a neo-Nazi pastor in Louisiana, a wealthy Florida businessman who called former President Barack Obama the N-word, and a neo-fascist activist recently arrested for opening fire on Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Portland, Oregon. 

The Trump campaign, which did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on this story, has been aware of at least some of the white supremacists’ donations, past media reports show. But it has declined to reject or return their money ― even though it is common practice for political campaigns to voluntarily forfeit donations from extremists. In 2015, for example, the Republican presidential campaigns of Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz returned thousands of dollars in contributions from the leader of a white supremacist group. Continue reading.

The Florida director of a pro-Trump Latino group is the chairman of the Proud Boys.

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Enrique Tarrio, the Florida state director of Latinos for Trump, a national grass-roots organization unaffiliated with the Trump campaign, is also the chairman of the Proud Boys, a far-right organization linked with white supremacy and acts of violence.

Mr. Tarrio said in an interview Thursday night that he had “personally knocked on 40,000 doors for the president” and was a close personal friend of Roger J. Stone Jr., a former presidential adviser.

When he was asked at the presidential candidates’ debate on Tuesday to denounce the Proud Boys, the president said, “stand back and stand by.” Mr. Tarrio said he did not interpret Mr. Trump’s comments as a call to arms: “What I took from it personally was to stand by him.” Continue reading.