Category: Uncategorized

Ever since Donald Trump shocked the world by winning the presidency in 2016, there has been a premium on political pundits and journalists locating his Secret Political Genius. This long-running search is irresistible for three main reasons: 1) It’s a fascinating political parlor game; 2) The subject is universally interesting; and 3) It provides a bunch of contrarians the chance to buck the conventional wisdom.

Such is the case with Trump’s racist tweets this weekend. While your surface-level analyst would swear it’s bad politics to tell nonwhite congresswomen to go back to their countries (even though they were born in America), plenty have argued Trump’s got something up his sleeve. It’s just smart base politics, they say. It’s tricking the media and Democrats into overreacting, others say. And then there’s the longest-running bit of amateur analysis: It’s a distraction — from the ICE raids, or his asylum changes, or the Jeffrey Epstein scandal or . . . something.

“Forget the man’s tweets; he’s playing us like a Stradivarius,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) pleaded Wednesday morning on CNN.

View these complete July 19 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Lawmakers on Thursday expressed alarm over the threats toward freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) after a crowd at President Trump’s rally the night before chanted “send her back.”

Multiple Democrats are calling for more enhanced security for members of Congress, including Omar and her three closest allies who were also targeted by Trump earlier this week when he suggested they all “go back” to other countries.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) announced on the House floor that he plans to introduce legislation asking for more security resources for lawmakers. While members of leadership in both parties have dedicated security details, rank-and-file members do not.

View the complete July 18 article by Cristina Marcos and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Bret Baier, the chief political anchor for Fox News, pointed out on Wednesday that President Donald Trump himself had engaged in the same America-bashing rhetoric that he is now accusing Democrats of.

Trump has defended his racist remarks targeting four progressive congresswomen by alleging that they “hate our country.” On Fox News Wednesday, Baier was asked about comments one of those congresswomen — Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN) — had made, in which she said “I probably love this country more than anyone that is naturally born and I’m ashamed to continue living in its hypocrisy.”

“But right now … [Trump’s] pillars for the 2020 race [are]: I am not going to allow socialism to take over. American patriotism and pride. Sovereignty along our borders and stopping illegal immigration. Probably late-term abortion and the economy if it continues to cook.”

View the complete July 17 article from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

The fates of rural and urban Americans are intimately intertwined. Rural communities account for a significant portion of the U.S. population and economy. Approximately one-fifth of Americans live in rural areas, and 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product is generated in nonmetropolitan counties.¹ Moreover, rural areas are crucial sources of water, food, energy, and recreation for all Americans. Rural areas constitute 97 percent of America’s land mass, accounting for a large portion of the country’s vital natural resources.²

Despite the importance of rural communities to the health of the nation overall, federal policy has left many rural communities behind. Though some are thriving, rural areas overall have yet to match the employment levels reached prior to the 2008 recession, and deep poverty³ persists in many rural communities.⁴ Beyond barriers to jobs and economic opportunity, some rural areas also lack access to crucial services such as health care or the internet.⁵ Continue reading “Redefining Rural America”

“It’s my opinion they hate our country.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated his previous racist attacks on four congresswomen of color, saying they were free to leave the country if they did not like his policies.

“They can go wherever they want or they can stay,” he said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “But they should love our country. They shouldn’t hate our country. If you look at what they said, I have clips right here. The most vile, horrible statements about our country. About Israel. About others. It’s up to them. They can do what they want. They can leave, they can stay, but they should love our country. They should work for the good of our country.”

Democrats have criticized the Trump administration in recent months for its treatment of migrants at the southern border, specifically those seeking asylum from several Central American countries. Official reports have showed massive overcrowding and inhumane conditions at border detention facilities, prompting many to speak out against the policies which led to those conditions.

View the complete July 16 article by Melanie Schmitz on the ThinkProgress website here.

View the complete July 16 article by Danielle McLean on the ThinkProgress website here.

Soon after The Miami Herald began reporting on his favorable treatment by law enforcement in an early 2000s sex crimes investigation, jet-setting financier Jeffrey Epstein paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to people investigators had identified as possible co-conspirators — payments which federal prosecutors alleged Friday might have been meant to influence them.

The allegation came in a court filing by federal prosecutors in New York, who recently arrested and charged Epstein with sexually abusing dozens of young girls from 2002 to 2005. The arrest set off a chain of events that led to the resignation Friday of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney in Miami during the earlier investigation of Epstein.

In seeking to keep the multimillionaire jailed pending trial, New York prosecutors argued Epstein had a history of trying to obstruct inquiries into his misdeeds, including those from journalists.

View the complete July 12 article by Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

President Donald Trump’s “Social Media Summit” was attended by a slew of right wing extremists, conspiracy theorists, and bigots, so he had the support of the room when he slaughtered the First Amendment.

Trump told attendees Thursday afternoon that it’s not free speech if reporters write bad stories about him if he doesn’t like or agree with the facts, and then becomes “angry” at it.

“So to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad, to me that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it,” Trump told attendees. “But that’s not free speech.”

View the complete July 12 article by David Badash from the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

This week, British Ambassador Kim Darroch resigned after it was revealed that he called the Trump White House a “uniquely dysfunctional environment.” He also called the President incompetent.

Raw Story spoke with Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, who concurs with that assessment, and has also argued that President Trump suffers from a uniquely dangerous pathology that will end up wrecking the country.

Lee is a forensic psychiatrist and an expert on violence at Yale School of Medicine. She helped launch a public health approach to global violence prevention as a consultant to the World Health Organization and other United Nations bodies since 2002. She is author of the textbook, “Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Causes, Consequences, and Cures,” president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and editor of the New York Times bestseller, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” She and her coauthors recently prepared a mental health analysis of the Mueller report with recommendations. Next week, they will present their analysis at a town hall-style meeting on Capitol Hill as well as unveil five questions they would like to ask Special Counsel Robert Mueller at his testimony the following day (for more information, visit: dangerouscase.org).

View the complete July 12 article by Tana Ganeva from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Attorney General Bill Barr has once again made a mess of his role at the top of the Justice Department, and it revealed once again why neither he nor President Donald Trump can faithfully fulfill their constitutional duties.

Questions about the integrity of the Justice Department arose immediately when Jeffrey Epstein, the registered sex offender and financier with ties to powerful people like Trump and President Bill Clinton, was arrested over the weekend on sex trafficking charges. Epstein had previously come under scrutiny by the feds for these same allegations, but for unknown reasons — perhaps his connections to powerful people — he got away without any federal charges and faced a relatively light penalty from a state prosecution in 2008.

So it was natural to wonder, since Trump is now president, whether the new prosecution will face any undue influence. Some legal experts were worried that Barr might use his position at the top of the Justice Department to insert himself into the federal prosecutors’ decisionmaking if he thought it might help Trump, and I argued Monday that the mere appearance of this possibility was enough reason for him to recuse from the case.

View the complete July 10 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.