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newstfionline · 1 year ago

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Monday, July 8, 2024

Political unrest worldwide is often fueled by high prices and huge debts (NYT) Like a globe-spanning tornado that touches down with little predictability, deep economic anxieties are leaving a trail of political turmoil and violence across poor and rich countries alike. In Kenya, a nation buckling under debt, protests over a proposed tax increase last week resulted in dozens of deaths, abductions of demonstrators and a partly scorched Parliament. At the same time in Bolivia, where residents have lined up for gas because of shortages, a military general led a failed coup attempt, saying the president, a former economist, must “stop impoverishing our country,” just before an armored truck rammed into the presidential palace. And in France, after months of road blockades by farmers angry over low wages and rising costs, the far-right party surged in support in the first round of snap parliamentary elections on Sunday, bringing its long-taboo brand of nationalist and anti-immigrant politics to the threshold of power. The causes, context and conditions underlying these disruptions vary widely from country to country. But a common thread is clear: rising inequality, diminished purchasing power and growing anxiety that the next generation will be worse off than this one.

Texas coastal residents told to expect power outages, flooding as Beryl moves closer to landfall (AP) Beryl began lashing Texas with rain and intensifying winds Sunday as coastal residents boarded up windows, left beach towns under evacuation orders and prepared for the powerful storm that has already cut a deadly path through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean. Although Beryl remained a tropical storm Sunday as it churned toward Texas, forecasters expected it to regain hurricane strength in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall early Monday. The storm was projected to come ashore near the small coastal town of Matagorda, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Houston, but officials cautioned the path could still change. Texas officials warned the storm would cause power outages and flooding.

Argentine President Milei heads to CPAC in Brazil, snubbing Lula and escalating a political feud (AP) Given the choice between a far-right convention to bash his enemies and a presidential summit to discuss regional trade policy, Argentine President Javier Milei preferred the stadium packed with cheering fans. The libertarian leader was in Brazil on Sunday, preparing to headline the country’s version of CPAC, the conservative political action conference, alongside former President Javier Bolsonaro in Brazil’s southern city of Balneario Camboriu. In skipping the Mercosur trade bloc summit in Paraguay and sidling up to Bolsonaro just days after federal police indicted the right-wing populist in a scheme to embezzle Saudi diamonds, Milei delivered another harsh rebuke to Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, escalating a risky feud with his country’s biggest trading partner.

French leftists win most seats in legislative elections, beating back far-right surge, pollsters say (AP) A coalition of the French left that quickly banded together to beat a surging far right in legislative elections won the most seats in parliament but not a majority, according to polling projections Sunday, a stunning outcome that threatens to plunge the country into political and economic turmoil. The projections put President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in second, no longer in control of parliament, and the bruised far right in third. With no bloc securing a clear majority, France faces uncertainty that could rattle markets and its economy, the European Union’s second-largest, and cast a shadow of political instability over the Paris Olympics opening in less than three weeks. Final results are not expected until late Sunday or early Monday in the highly volatile snap election that redrew the political map of France even before votes were cast.

In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit (NYT) Hours after a battle in eastern Ukraine in August, a wounded and unarmed Russian soldier crawled through a nearly destroyed trench, seeking help from his captors, a unit of international volunteers led by an American. Caspar Grosse, a German medic in that unit, said he saw the soldier plead for medical attention in a mix of broken English and Russian. It was dusk. A team member looked for bandages. That is when, Mr. Grosse said, a fellow soldier hobbled over and fired his weapon into the Russian soldier’s torso. He slumped, still breathing. Another soldier fired — “just shot him in the head,” Mr. Grosse recalled in an interview. Mr. Grosse said he was so upset by the episode that he confronted his commander. He said he spoke to The New York Times after what he regarded as unwarranted killings continued. It is highly unusual for a soldier to speak publicly about battlefield conduct, particularly involving men whom he still considers friends. But he said he was too troubled to keep silent. The shooting of the unarmed, wounded Russian soldier is one of several killings that have unsettled the Chosen Company, one of the best-known units of international troops fighting on behalf of Ukraine.

Heavy rains trigger landslides in Nepal, 11 killed, 8 missing (Reuters) Heavy rains triggered landslides and flash floods killing at least 11 people in the last 36 hours in Nepal and blocking key highways and roads, officials said on Sunday. Eight people were missing, either washed away by floods or buried in landslides, while 12 others were injured and being treated in hospitals, police spokesperson Dan Bahadur Karki said. At least 50 people across Nepal have died in landslides, floods and lightning strikes since mid-June when annual monsoon rains started. Hundreds of people die every year in landslides and flash floods that are common in mostly mountainous Nepal during the monsoon season which normally starts in mid-June and continues through mid-September.

In Rafah, We Saw Destruction and the Limits of Israel’s Gaza Strategy (NYT) The armed convoy of jeeps filled with reporters rumbled into a dusty Rafah, passing flattened houses and battered apartment buildings. As we dismounted our Humvees, a stillness gripped this swath of southern Gaza, near the border with Egypt. Slabs of concrete and twisted rebar dotted the scarred landscape. Kittens darted through the wreckage. Streets once bustling with life were now a maze of rubble. Everyone was gone. More than a million people have fled to avoid an Israeli onslaught that began two months ago. Many have been displaced repeatedly and now live in tent cities that stretch for miles, where they face an uncertain future as they mourn the loss of loved ones. As Israel says it is winding down its operation against Hamas in Rafah, the Israeli military invited foreign journalists into the city on a supervised visit. The military says that it has fought with precision and restraint against Hamas fighters embedded in civilian areas. But the death, destruction and mass displacement of civilians have left Israel increasingly isolated diplomatically.

An overview of Israel’s widening conflict (Bloomberg) Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful militant group in Lebanon, are lurching closer to all-out war even as Israel dispatches its intelligence chief to Qatar for talks after Hamas signaled broad agreement with a US plan for a cease-fire in Gaza. To the north, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the US sees a grim “momentum” toward a wider war. Tensions rose as Israel killed a senior Hezbollah in an airstrike in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah responded by launching more than 200 missiles and a swarm of drones at Israel. In Gaza, even amid the possible progress on a cease-fire, Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate parts of Khan Younis, underscoring its struggle to stop Hamas from regrouping in areas that it previously attacked. And the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said that more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed there since the war began.

Sahel States Form New Alliance, Break from ECOWAS, Align with Russia in Major Regional Shift (Daily Briefs) Military juntas from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), distancing themselves from ECOWAS and aligning with Russia. The new alliance aims to bolster regional cooperation and establish a joint investment bank, amid postponed elections and ongoing terrorist threats. The alliance, led by coup-installed leaders, accused ECOWAS of being influenced by France and postponed elections.

Kenya’s dramatic flooding sweeps away a central part of the economy: Its farms (AP) With dismay, Martha Waema and her husband surveyed their farm that was submerged by weeks of relentless rainfall across Kenya. Water levels would rise to shoulder height after only a night of heavy downpour. The couple had expected a return of 200,000 shillings ($1,500) from their three acres after investing 80,000 shillings ($613) in maize, peas, cabbages, tomatoes and kale. But their hopes have been uprooted and destroyed. “I have been farming for 38 years, but I have never encountered losses of this magnitude,” said the 62-year-old mother of 10. The rains that started in mid-March have posed immediate dangers and left others to come. They have killed nearly 300 people, left dams at historically high levels and led the government to order residents to evacuate flood-prone areas—and bulldoze the homes of those who don’t. Now a food security crisis lies ahead, along with even higher prices in a country whose president had sought to make agriculture an even greater engine of the economy.

Students Target Teachers in Group TikTok Attack, Shaking Their School (NYT) In February, Patrice Motz, a veteran Spanish teacher at Great Valley Middle School in Malvern, Pa., was warned by another teacher that trouble was brewing. Some eighth graders at her public school had set up fake TikTok accounts impersonating teachers. Ms. Motz, who had never used TikTok, created an account. She found a fake profile for @patrice.motz, which had posted a real photo of her at the beach with her husband and their young children. “Do you like to touch kids?” a text in Spanish over the family vacation photo asked. “Answer: Sí.” In the days that followed, some 20 educators—about one quarter of the school’s faculty—discovered they were victims of fake teacher accounts rife with pedophilia innuendo, racist memes, homophobia and made-up sexual hookups among teachers. Hundreds of students soon viewed, followed or commented on the fraudulent accounts. In the aftermath, the school district briefly suspended several students, teachers said. The principal during one lunch period chastised the eighth-grade class for its behavior. The biggest fallout has been for teachers like Ms. Motz, who said she felt “kicked in the stomach” that students would so casually savage teachers’ families. The online harassment has left some teachers worried that social media platforms are helping to stunt the growth of empathy in students. Some teachers are now hesitant to call out pupils who act up in class. Others said it had been challenging to keep teaching.

#headlines #news

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arpov-blog-blog · 1 year ago

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Hopium Chronicles

It's Go Time - Let's Win NY-3, North Carolina and the Presidency, Together

For Those In The DC Area - Join Me and Anderson Clayton Next Wed 1/31 For A Fundraiser for the North Carolina Democratic Party

SIMON ROSENBERG 1/24/2024

On To The General - In recent weeks I’ve written about how I think President Biden will win in 2024; how much better off we are today; how the Democratic Party is strong, and winning elections all across the country; and how Donald Trump is the most unfit man to ever run for the Presidency.

I’ve also talked about how I want to approach this year with a growth, expansion, taking stuff away from them mindset. It’s what we did in 2022, gaining ground over 2020 in AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA, picking up a Senate seat, 2 governorships, 4 state legislative chambers and keeping the House close enough to make it far more likely we flip it this time. It’s also what we’ve done together here at Hopium since we began last March, as we

Heard from the WI Dem Chair Ben Wikler, and then worked to flip a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by winning 56% of the vote, take ideological control over the chamber and are now working to end arguably the worst gerrymander in America.

Heard from Donna Deegan, and helped her flip Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida and one of the largest Republican held cities in the US. Coming just as Ron DeSantis was beginning his ill-fated Presidential campaign, this big win against a close DeSantis ally in DeSantis’ home region was a huge symbolic victory, and a sign that the Florida Democratic Party comeback had begun.

Heard from David Pepper, and helped him and the good people of Ohio win their abortion ballot initiative with 57% of the vote in November, restore fundamental rights that has been taken away and end their six week abortion ban.

Along with our friends at Network NOVA heard from Virginia Assembly campaign chair Delegate Dan Helmer, and worked to keep the Virginia Senate and flip the House. Together, we took away the Virginia Assembly, and took away Glenn Youngkin’s hopes of turning the 15 week abortion ban into a political safe haven for national Republicans on abortion. In January we are able to see the further fruits of our labor when Democratic leader Delegate Don Scott was elected the first black Speaker in the history of the home of the Confederacy.

Heard from Tom Keen, and helped him flip a critical Florida state house seat on the morning after Trump and DeSantis finished 1-2 in Iowa and in the early days of their 2024 legislative session. It was another critical step forward in regaining lost ground in Florida, one of our most important expansion opportunities in the coming years.

We’ve been focusing here on growth, expansion and taking stuff away from them because I think MAGA’s escalating extremism is giving us profound opportunities for demographic and geographic expansion this cycle that we simply must seize. I made this argument to all of you in my very first post here at Hopium last March, Get to 55: Growing Our Coalition, The Youth Opportunity, writing:

[One of the projects I’m planning to work on over the next few years a group of us are calling “Get to 55.” The idea is to create a big conversation in Democratic and pro-democracy circles about how to grow the current Democratic coalition from Biden’s 51.4% in 2020 to 55% in 2024 and keep it there for a while. It may be the only way we’re going to get the Republicans to abandon MAGA and become a more traditional center-right party. Getting to 55% will be good for Democrats of course, but it will also be good for the country and the long-term future of the Republican Party itself. ]

Now on to the rest of 2024.

Winning the Presidency, Getting to 55/crushing MAGA, with a special focus on flipping North Carolina and expanding our Electoral College map

Taking back the US House by endorsing and working to flip 6-10 seats across the US. While our target list will be announced in late February, we are starting this effort by working to flip NY-3 with Tom Suozzi on Feb 13th

Possible targeted projects in FL and TX, both Presidential expansion and Senate pick up states in 2024

Other opportunities as they present themselves (like Tom Keen’s race)

So, what can you do today to get going and to help us keep winning and taking stuff away from them? There are three things you can do right now, this morning:

Help Joe Beat Trump - First, donate to and join the Biden campaign. This is job 1. Start getting the campaign emails, start thinking about how you are going to help beyond making a modest donation today. Work to become an info warrior for him and the Democratic Party, and as they ramp up commit to volunteer in all the ways we know how. We have at least 7 states to win - AZ, GA, MI, NC, NV, PA, WI in 2024. You can donate and join the Biden campaign by using this link right now. (Right click on links to open)

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xhxhxhx · 5 years ago

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Barack Obama's 2000 primary run against Bobby Rush for Illinois's first congressional district was the only race he ever lost.

Although Obama won the Hyde Park precincts around the University of Chicago and the white suburbs around Evergreen Park and Mount Greenwood, Representative Rush dominated in the Black precincts in this majority-Black district on Chicago's South Side.

“Nobody sent me,” Obama had said at his campaign kickoff, on September 26, 1999. “I’m not part of some long-standing political organization. I have no fancy sponsors. I’m not even from Chicago." The primary results underlined that.

As Ryan Lizza later reported, the results made Obama rethink some things:

Obama learned the exact nature of his appeal, as well as his handicaps. Unlike Obama’s State Senate district, where the University of Chicago and the multicultural Hyde Park produced most of the votes, Rush’s congressional district extended deep into black neighborhoods where Obama was unknown. His academic background was a burden, too. Will Burns explained, “Even though the University of Chicago is one of the largest employers on the South Side of Chicago, it is seen by some, particularly black nationalists, as a bastion of white political power, as a huge entity that doesn’t take into account the interests of the community, that doesn’t have a full democratic partnership with the community, and does what it wants to the community in maintaining clear boundaries about where black people are. It’s seen as an expansive force, trying to expand into Bronzeville and into Woodlawn”—historically black neighborhoods adjacent to Hyde Park—“and put poor blacks out of the area. The University of Chicago is not a brand that helps you if you’re trying to get votes on the South Side of Chicago.”

Obama’s fund-raising success and his professional networks were also viewed with suspicion. Chicago is still a city of villages, and Obama was adept at gliding back and forth between the South Side, where he campaigned for votes, and the wealthy Gold Coast, the lakefront neighborhood of high-rise condominiums and deluxe shopping, where he raised money. One day in Hyde Park, I mentioned the name Bettylu Saltzman (the Project Vote supporter and daughter of a Bulls owner) to Lois Friedberg-Dobry (the South Side operator). “I don’t run in those circles,” she said. Later, over lunch with Saltzman at a café in a gourmet supermarket on the Gold Coast, I mentioned the Dobrys and Obama’s Independent Voters of Illinois friends, and she said, “You know, the North Side and the South Side of Chicago—it’s like two different worlds.”

A South Side operator named Al Kindle, a large man with a booming voice, was a field operator for Obama’s race against Rush. He had helped elect Harold Washington, and he saw Obama’s congressional campaign from the street level. We met one evening at Calypso Café, a Caribbean restaurant that Obama has said is his favorite place to eat in Hyde Park, and Kindle described some of the worst moments in the campaign. “The accusations were that Obama was sent here and owned by the Jews,” Kindle said. “That he was here to steal the black vote and steal black land and that he was represented by the—as they were called—‘the white man.’ And that Obama wasn’t black enough and didn’t know the black experience, the black community. It was quite deafening in terms of how they went after Alderman Preckwinkle and myself. People would say, ‘Oh, Kindle, man, we trust you, you being fooled. Obama’s got you fooled.’ And some people called me a traitor.”.

The loss taught Obama a great deal about the components of his natural coalition. According to Dan Shomon, the first poll that Obama conducted revealed that the demographic he could win over most easily was white voters. Obama, who hadn’t shown any particular gift for oratory in the race, now learned to shed his stiff approach to campaigning—described by Preckwinkle as that of an “arrogant academic.” Mikva told me, “The first time I heard him talk to a black church, he was very professorial, more so even than he was in the white community. There was no joking, no self-deprecation, no style. It didn’t go over well at all.”

But, as he had in his 1996 campaign, Obama had attracted a young and zealous corps of campaign workers. “I remember one of the candidates in the race used to talk about how crazed our volunteers were, because they were passionate, energized,” Will Burns said. “You’d come by the office on Eighty-seventh Street and there’d be a bunch of guys with no teeth waiting to get their next Old Grand-dad and then these Shiraz-drinking, Nation-reading, T.N.R.-quoting young black folk. It was a random-ass mix. It was beautiful, though. When I see the crowds now, they’re very reminiscent of what was happening then.”

Emil Jones told me that, after 2000, Obama moved decisively away from being pigeonholed as an inner-city pol. During one debate with Rush, he noted that he and the other candidates were all “progressive, urban Democrats.” Even though he lost, that primary taught him that he might be something more than that. “He learned that for Barack Obama it was not the type of district that he was well suited for,” Jones said. “The type of campaign that he had to run to win that district is not Barack Obama. It was a predominantly African-American district. It was a district where you had to campaign solely on those issues. And Barack did not campaign that way, and so as a result he lost. Which was good.” Meaning, it was good for Barack Obama.

After the State Senate was redistricted in 2001, Obama's district looked very different:

One day in the spring of 2001, about a year after the loss to Rush, Obama walked into the Stratton Office Building, in Springfield, a shabby nineteen-fifties government workspace for state officials next to the regal state capitol. He went upstairs to a room that Democrats in Springfield called “the inner sanctum.” Only about ten Democratic staffers had access; entry required an elaborate ritual—fingerprint scanners and codes punched into a keypad. The room was large, and unremarkable except for an enormous printer and an array of computers with big double monitors. On the screens that spring day were detailed maps of Chicago, and Obama and a Democratic consultant named John Corrigan sat in front of a terminal to draw Obama a new district. Corrigan was the Democrat in charge of drawing all Chicago districts, and he also happened to have volunteered for Obama in the campaign against Rush.

Obama’s former district had been drawn by Republicans after the 1990 census. But, after 2000, Illinois Democrats won the right to redistrict the state. Partisan redistricting remains common in American politics, and, while it outrages a losing party, it has so far survived every legal challenge. In the new century, mapping technology has become so precise and the available demographic data so rich that politicians are able to choose the kinds of voter they want to represent, right down to individual homes. A close look at the post-2000 congressional map of Bobby Rush’s district reveals that it tears through Hyde Park in a curious series of irregular turns. One of those lines bypasses Obama’s address by two blocks. Rush, or someone looking out for his interests, had carved the upstart Obama out of Rush’s congressional district.

In truth, Rush had little to worry about; Obama was already on a different political path. Like every other Democratic legislator who entered the inner sanctum, Obama began working on his “ideal map.” Corrigan remembers two things about the district that he and Obama drew. First, it retained Obama’s Hyde Park base—he had managed to beat Rush in Hyde Park—then swooped upward along the lakefront and toward downtown. By the end of the final redistricting process, his new district bore little resemblance to his old one. Rather than jutting far to the west, like a long thin dagger, into a swath of poor black neighborhoods of bungalow homes, Obama’s map now shot north, encompassing about half of the Loop, whose southern portion was beginning to be transformed by developers like Tony Rezko, and stretched far up Michigan Avenue and into the Gold Coast, covering much of the city’s economic heart, its main retail thoroughfares, and its finest museums, parks, skyscrapers, and lakefront apartment buildings. African-Americans still were a majority, and the map contained some of the poorest sections of Chicago, but Obama’s new district was wealthier, whiter, more Jewish, less blue-collar, and better educated. It also included one of the highest concentrations of Republicans in Chicago.

“It was a radical change,” Corrigan said. The new district was a natural fit for the candidate that Obama was in the process of becoming. “He saw that when we were doing fund-raisers in the Rush campaign his appeal to, quite frankly, young white professionals was dramatic.”

Obama’s personal political concerns were not the only factor driving the process. During the previous round of remapping, in 1991, Republicans had created Chicago districts where African-Americans were the overwhelming majority, packing the greatest number of loyal Democrats into the fewest districts. A decade later, Democrats tried to spread the African-American vote among more districts. The idea was to create enough Democratic-leaning districts so that the Party could take control of the state legislature. That goal was fine with Obama; his new district offered promising, untapped constituencies for him as he considered his next political move. “The exposure he would get to some of the folks that were on boards of the museums and C.E.O.s of some of the companies that he would represent would certainly help him in the long run,” Corrigan said.

“In the end,” Lizza wrote, “Obama’s North Side fund-raising base and his South Side political base were united in one district.” And that made all the difference.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 16, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Disgraced retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn is endorsing candidates for office.

Flynn advised former president Trump’s 2016 campaign and was Trump’s first national security adviser. He served for just 22 days before having to resign after news broke that he had lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

Flynn pleaded guilty to "willfully and knowingly" lying to the FBI but withdrew the plea two weeks before sentencing. Then–attorney general William Barr directed the Department of Justice to drop all charges against Flynn before former president Donald Trump pardoned him on November 25, 2020.

Just days later, Flynn retweeted a news release from a right-wing Ohio group called “We the People Convention.” That release contained a petition asking Trump to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, silence the media, and have the military “oversee a national re-vote” of the 2020 election. The petition ended by calling on Trump “to boldly act to save our nation…. We will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own, if you do not act within your powers to defend us.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley immediately opposed Flynn’s suggestion. He distanced the military from talk of a coup. “Our military is very very capable… we are determined to defend the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “No one should doubt that.” A defense official told Military Times that the idea of Trump declaring martial law and having the military redo the election is “insane in a year that we didn’t think could get anymore insane.”

But Trump did not back down. On December 2, he released a video he said was “maybe the most important speech I’ve ever made.” It was a 46-minute rant insisting that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he won the 2020 election. While he lost virtually every court challenge he mounted and his own attorney general, William Barr, said there was no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election, Trump insisted that there was “massive” voter fraud and called on the Supreme Court to “do what’s right for our country,” including throwing out hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes so “I very easily win in all states.”

Flynn had been an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy, taking an oath to it on July 4, 2020. On January 8, 2021, Twitter permanently banned Flynn, along with others who were promoting the views of the QAnon conspiracy that Trump actually won the 2020 election.

But, far from disappearing, Flynn has continued to speak to pro-Trump groups and to rebuild his brand, going so far in May as to call for a coup in the U.S. like that happening in Myanmar, where in February the military seized power from the democratically elected government.

Flynn appears to be regaining ground among Trump loyalists. Yesterday, in Michigan, he endorsed a Republican candidate for secretary of state, the official in charge of elections. The candidate, Kristina Karamo, tweeted that she was honored to receive the endorsement of Flynn, whom she called “a victim of political persecution” who “continues to fight fearlessly for [America]. His selflessness, wisdom, and kindness encourages us all.”

Today, Flynn endorsed Eric Greitens for a Missouri senate seat. Greitens resigned from the Missouri governorship in 2018, after accusations that he had threatened and assaulted an affair partner and suggestions that he had used an email list from a nonprofit for his political campaign. Greitens resigned in disgrace but is trying to relaunch his political career as a Trump supporter, running for the Senate seat of retiring Missouri Senator Roy Blunt. Greitens has picked up the endorsements of a number of Trump loyalists, although he has not yet received the endorsement of Trump, despite courting it quite eagerly.

In his announcement of support for Greitens, Flynn made a play for the leadership of the MAGA movement by attacking the Republicans who refused to get on board with Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

His announcement played off Tuesday’s news that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who had opposed his talk of a military coup to keep Trump in office, had reassured his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not attack without provocation and notice despite the former president’s erratic and dangerous behavior during the last weeks of his term. Trump Republicans are demanding Milley’s resignation, but their determination to undermine Milley by portraying him as a tool of what they are calling the “radical left” has been evident for a while. In the spring, Republican lawmakers complained that, as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “Dem politicians & woke media are trying to turn [the military] into pansies.” Milley defended the idea that it is important “for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read” and said, “I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it.” Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson called him “a pig” and “stupid.”

In his message endorsing Greitens, Flynn brought these themes together and seemed to be trying to advance his own future in the government in place of Trump: “America needs fighters,” he said. “Worse than the radical leftists, the corrupt Deep State, the mainstream media, and Big Tech are the feckless and spineless Republicans who have utterly surrendered…. [T]hose who betrayed President Trump the most were not the leftists but the cowardly Republicans in Name Only…. We don’t need any more insiders or career politicians in Washington, especially not those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” an apparent reference to Milley’s calls with his counterpart in China. Flynn applauded Greitens’ suggestion that the 2020 election was stolen, and then said he was proud to stand with Greitens “in our shared mission to revive our Republic.”

Flynn seems to be trying to pick up Trump's falling mantle as the former president himself appears to be losing relevance.

In Tuesday’s recall election in California, Democrats framed the choice as one between Governor Gavin Newsom and his Trump-like chief rival, and voters resoundingly rejected the Republican. Even among Trump’s usual base, his appeal seems to be fading. According to sportswriter Dan Rafael, who specializes in boxing, sources have told him that the September 11 fight between Evander Holyfield and Vitor Belfort—the fight Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., commented on—garnered only about 150,000 pay-per-view buys, which means it grossed about $7.5 million. This is, Rafael says “a massive $ loser…not remotely close to covering even the purses, not to mention rest of expenses.”

Flynn’s attempt to reinsert himself into American politics is a story that I’m watching, but the bigger news today is coming out of China, where the country’s second-largest property developer, China Evergrande Group, is tottering. Evergrande has assets of $355 billion; it employs 200,000 staff members and hires about 3.8 million people a year for its different projects.

The slowing property markets in China and a government crackdown on reckless borrowing have weakened the huge entity. Its collapse would destabilize Chinese banks. People worried about the safety of their investments, and vendors worrying they will not be paid have begun to protest outside the company’s main headquarters; they have been removed by security. Observers expect the Chinese government will help to manage any forthcoming collapse, but the ripples from such a failure will likely be felt around the world.

—

Notes:

Dan Rafael @DanRafael1Per sources, #HolyfieldBelfort event totaled about 150k PPV buys between linear & digital platforms, which would make it a massive $ loser for Triller. At 150k it would gross about $7.5M from ppv, not remotely close to covering even the purses, not to mention rest of expenses.

228 Retweets1,492 Likes

September 16th 2021

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-michael-flynn-sidney-powell-qanon-account-purge-n1253550

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-eric-greitens-endorsement/2021/07/22/9e9998a2-e8c0-11eb-97a0-a09d10181e36_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/23/eric-greitens-senate-governor-affair/

https://taskandpurpose.com/pentagon-run-down/tucker-carlson-military-mark-milley/

https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-white-rage-clip-video-fox-news-general-milley-2021-6

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/21/conservative-critics-military-policies-490197

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/mark-milley-critical-race-theory/

https://themissouritimes.com/greitens-endorsed-by-michael-flynn/

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/556209-michael-flynn-says-myanmar-like-coup-should-happen-in-the-us

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/kinzinger-republican-political-points-milley

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-michael-flynn-sidney-powell-qanon-account-purge-n1253550

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/to-celebrate-the-fourth-michael-flynn-posts-a-pledge-to-conspiracy-group-qanon/

https://www.reuters.com/business/how-china-evergrandes-debt-troubles-pose-systemic-risk-2021-09-16/?s=03

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/business/evergrande-debt-crisis.html?s=03

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/16/protestors-hauled-away-from-evergrande-hq-as-meltdown-fears-mount

https://www.reuters.com/article/china-evergrande-debt-contagion-idCNL4N2QG1T9

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #sedition #treason #General Flynn #January 6 2021 #Insurrection #Right Wing Terrorism #history

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

FiveThirtyEight has issued its final presidential forecast. There hasn’t been a lot of change over the past 24 or 48 hours, as most of the late polling either came in close to our previous polling averages, or came from — frankly — fairly random pollsters that don’t get a lot of weight in our forecast.

Of course, you can click over to the forecast right now if you’d like to see what it says — I’m sure most of you have already done that. But in these accompanying write-ups, I like to provide some context. When I wrote about our final presidential forecast in 2012, for example, I was trying to explain why a race that everyone assumed was close actually reflected a fairly decisive advantage for Barack Obama. When I wrote about our final forecast in 2016, conversely, it was pretty much the opposite. I was trying to explain that, although Hillary Clinton was favored, what most of the media was portraying as a sure thing was a highly competitive contest between her and Donald Trump.

This year … I’m not really sure what I’m trying to convince you of. If you think that polling is irrevocably broken because of 2016 �� well, that’s not really correct. On the other hand, if it weren’t for 2016, people might look at Joe Biden’s large lead in national polls — the largest of any candidate on the eve of the election since Bill Clinton in 1996 — and conclude that Trump was certain to be a one-term president. If you do think that, please read my story from earlier this week about how Trump can win and why a 10 percent chance needs to be taken seriously.

Nonetheless, Biden’s standing is considerably stronger than Clinton’s at the end of the 2016 race. His lead is larger than Clinton’s in every battleground state, and more than double her lead nationally. Our model forecasts Biden to win the popular vote by 8 percentage points,5 more than twice Clinton’s projected margin at the end of 2016.

Indeed, some of the dynamics that allowed Trump to prevail in 2016 wouldn’t seem to exist this year. There are considerably fewer undecided voters in this race — just 4.8 percent of voters say they’re undecided or plan to vote for third-party candidates, as compared to 12.5 percent at the end of 2016. And the polls have been considerably more stable this year than they were four years ago. Finally, unlike the “Comey letter” in the closing days of the campaign four years ago — when then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress that new evidence had turned up pertinent to the investigation into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state — there’s been no major development in the final 10 days to further shake up the race.

Now, there are also some sources of error that weren’t as relevant four years ago. The big surge in early and mail voting — around 100 million people have already voted! — could present challenges to pollsters, for instance. Still, even making what we think are fairly conservative assumptions, our final forecast has Biden with an 89 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, as compared to a 10 percent chance for Trump. (The remaining 1 percent reflects rounding error, plus the chance of an Electoral College tie.)

But what’s tricky about this race is that — because of Trump’s Electoral College advantage, which he largely carries over from 2016 — it wouldn’t take that big of a polling error in Trump’s favor to make the election interesting. Importantly, interesting isn’t the same thing as a likely Trump win; instead, the probable result of a 2016-style polling error would be a Biden victory but one that took some time to resolve and which could imperil Democrats’ chances of taking over the Senate. On the flip side, it wouldn’t take much of a polling error in Biden’s favor to turn 2020 into a historic landslide against Trump.

So as we did four years ago, let’s run through a few stress checks here. On average in past elections, the final polls have been off by around 3 percentage points. How would the map change if there were a 3-point error in Trump’s direction? And what about a 3-point error in Biden’s direction? Keeping in mind that some states move more than others in accordance with national trends, here’s what our final forecast shows:

How a 2016-sized polling error would change our forecast

Biden’s projected margin of victory or defeat in the most competitive states

with 3-point national error … State Final 538 Forecast IN BIDEN’S FAVOR IN TRUMP’S FAVOR New Hampshire +10.6 +14.5 +6.7 Minnesota +9.1 +12.1 +6.0 Wisconsin +8.3 +11.6 +5.1 Michigan +8.0 +11.2 +4.9 Nevada +6.1 +9.5 +2.8 Pennsylvania +4.7 +7.7 +1.7 NE-2 +3.2 +6.4 -0.0 Arizona +2.6 +5.8 -0.7 Florida +2.5 +5.7 -0.7 North Carolina +1.8 +4.7 -1.1 ME-2 +1.6 +4.8 -1.6 Georgia +1.0 +3.6 -1.6 Ohio -0.6 +2.5 -3.7 Iowa -1.5 +2.0 -5.0 Texas -1.5 +1.7 -4.7 Montana -6.4 -3.3 -9.5 South Carolina -7.5 -4.8 -10.2 Alaska -8.5 -5.3 -11.7 Missouri -9.4 -6.3 -12.5

First, before we get to the Biden-friendly or Trump-friendly scenarios: Suppose this is one of those happy years when there isn’t any systematic error in the polls — that is, Biden wins by about 8 points nationally. In that case, then Biden’s going to win the Electoral College, even if there might be polling misses in individual states. Biden’s easiest path to victory would be to win back three of the so-called “Blue Wall” states that Hillary Clinton lost: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Coupled with the states that Clinton won in 2016, that would get Biden up to 278 electoral votes, more than the 270 required. Pennsylvania is the most tenuous of the “Blue Wall” group, but even if Biden lost it — unlikely if polls are about right overall — he’d have plenty of other options as he’s also narrowly ahead in our final forecast in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia and only narrowly behind Trump in Ohio, Texas and Iowa.

What if there were a 3-point polling error in Biden’s favor? Then he’d be a favorite in all of the aforementioned states. Coupled with the 2nd Congressional Districts in Maine and Nebraska, where he’s also favored, that would result in his winning 413 electoral votes. Other states that are traditionally extremely red could even come into play for Biden too, with Montana being the most likely possibility, followed by South Carolina, Alaska and Missouri. This scenario would also make for an 11-point popular vote margin for Biden, the biggest by any candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984, and the biggest winning margin against an incumbent since Franklin Delano Roosevelt against Herbert Hoover in 1932.

But with a 3-point error in Trump’s direction — more or less what happened in 2016 — the race would become competitive. Biden would probably hold on, but he’d only be the outright favorite in states (and congressional districts) containing 279 electoral votes. In Pennsylvania, the tipping-point state, he’d be projected to win by 1.7 percentage points — not within the recount margin, but a close race.

Such a scenario would not be the end of the world for Biden. The extra cushion that he has relative to Clinton helps a lot; it means that with a 2016-style polling error, he’d narrowly win some states that she narrowly lost. Biden has polled well recently in Michigan and Wisconsin in particular and has big leads there. Still, this would not be the sort of outcome that Democrats were hoping for. For one thing, because Biden would probably be reliant on Pennsylvania in this scenario — a state that is expected to take some time to count its vote — the election might take longer to call. For another, it could yield a fairly bad map as far as Democrats’ Senate hopes go, as Biden would be a narrow underdog in several states with key Senate races, including Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Iowa. So while Biden isn’t a normal-sized polling error away from losing, he is a normal-sized polling error away from having a messy win that might not come with control of Congress.

Still, as much as we’ve tried to strike a note of caution, Democrats have a right to be pleased about where they wound up. Sure, Biden could be in a meaningly safer position with a larger polling lead in Pennsylvania or Arizona, where his numbers have slipped a bit down the stretch run. Nonetheless, if we’d told our Democratic readers six months ago that Biden would be heading into election morning ahead by 8 points nationally, also ahead by 8 points in Wisconsin and Michigan, by 5 points in Pennsylvania, by 2 or 3 points in Florida and Arizona, and even a little bit ahead in Georgia and with a pretty decent chance to win Texas, we think they’d be fairly pleased.

It’s also worth keeping in mind the background conditions in the country today. Trump only barely won the election four years ago, against a highly unpopular opponent in Clinton. In 2016, 18 percent of voters in the national exit poll disliked both Trump and Clinton, and those voters went for Trump by 17 points. If they’d merely split evenly, Clinton would have (narrowly) won the Electoral College. Many of those voters actually like Biden, though, who has much better favorability ratings than either Clinton or Trump.

Meanwhile, the election comes at a time where a 2:1 majority of voters are dissatisfied with the direction of the country amid a COVID-19 pandemic that his killed 233,000 Americans — and which has gotten worse in recent weeks — along with high (though improving) unemployment, a summer of racial protests, and continuous erosions of democratic norms by Trump and his administration. Trump’s approval rating has been in negative territory through virtually the entirety of his presidency. Trump’s electoral record is hardly unblemished: Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by nearly 9 points in 2018, about the same margin that Trump now trails in national polls, in an election where polls and forecasts were highly accurate.

In other words, given everything going on in the country — and Biden’s popularity relative to Clinton — it simply shouldn’t be that hard to imagine a small number of voters switching from Trump to Biden. Indeed, that’s what polls show: There are more Trump-to-Biden voters than Clinton-to-Trump voters. The lion’s share of people who voted for Gary Johnson or another third party candidate four years ago also say they plan to vote for Biden.

Trump might be able to overcome this with a disproportionately high Republican turnout. But while Republican turnout might be very high, Democratic turnout almost certainly will be too, as evidenced by, among other things: Democrats’ equal or higher enthusiasm level in polls; their very high numbers in early and absentee voting, and their greater fundraising prowess throughout the cycle.

Again, this is not to deny that Trump will turn out his voters, too. Our model projects overall turnout in the race to be a record setting 158 million, with an 80th percentile range between 147 million and 168 million. But if persuadable voters and independents are mostly flipping to the other party, you need your turnout to be high and for the other party’s to be low to have much of a shot, and that latter condition doesn’t appear likely for Trump.

Still, 10 percent chances happen, there’s never been an election quite like this one and this isn’t a moment that anybody should be taking anything for granted. We hope you’ll follow our coverage for as long as it takes to determine who won.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nate Silver

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sataniccapitalist · 5 years ago

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“Our survival depends on seeing this violent, barbarian behemoth for what it is.”

Chaos, violence, legal challenges, voter suppression and party suppression all culminated in the pathetic display of democratic degeneration on Election Day. After two decades of losing wars, plus the economic collapse of 2008, the response to COVID-19, and now the election debacle, if there were any doubts the U.S. is a morally exhausted empire in irreversible decline, they would have been erased with yesterday’s anti-democratic spectacle.

Democratic Party propagandists and “frightened” leftists are desperate. They tell their supporters and the public that the republic will not survive another term of Donald Trump. They point to his despicable, racist descriptions of undocumented migrant workers from Mexico; his characterization of some global South nations; his misogyny; his crude and obvious white supremacy; his authoritarian proclivities; and his pathological dishonesty—among his many character flaws—as reasons why he must be stopped.

However, for those of us who have been historically subjected to the colonial fascism that is the U.S. settler project, the liberal-left argument that the Trump regime represents some fundamental departure from previous administrations that were equally committed to white power and that he is an existential threat (to whom, we are not clear) remains unpersuasive.

As the Biden and Trump drama plays out, we ask from our experiences some simple questions on what might happen when a victor emerges:

Will either candidate really have the ability to restore the millions of jobs lost during the current economic crisis?

Will the illegal subversion of Venezuela and Nicaragua stop, and the blockade of Cuba end?

Will the prison-industrial complex that is housing ten of thousands of the Black and Brown economically redundant be closed?

Will the charges be dropped against Edward Snowden and the extradition demand for Julian Assange end?

Will Gaza continue to be the largest open-air prison on the planet?

Will the U.S. reverse its decision to deploy new intermediate-range missiles that will be equipped with nuclear warheads targeting Russia in Europe and China in the Asia-Pacific?

Will the Saudi and Obama-originated war on Yemen end?

Will the U.S. settler-colonial state really defund the police and the military?

“The liberal-left argument that the Trump regime represents some fundamental departure from previous administrations remains unpersuasive.”

What is this “new fascism” the latte-left talks about? What is this “existential threat”? For most of us, the threat has always been existential. When colonial Nazism that was inspired by the U.S. Jim Crow South was applied in Europe—with its violence and racism—it was only then that it took on a different moral and political characterization.

The racist French government launches a domestic terror campaign against Muslims in the country, while bombing Africans in Africa and overthrowing their governments. The European Union gives a human rights award to a political opposition in Venezuela that burns Black people alive because those Black people are seen as Maduro supporters. Meanwhile, NATO, the military wing of U.S. and European white supremacy, expands into South America to support the Monroe Doctrine that morally justifies U.S. regional domination. But fascism is coming to the U.S., they cry!

For those of us who reside in the colonized spaces of empire, leading with uncritical emotionalism as we confront and attempt to deal with the Trump phenomenon, is a self-indulgent diversion we cannot afford. That is because, for us, the consequences truly are life threatening.

In occupied Palestine, Venezuela, Yemen, the South-side of Chicago, Haiti, the concentration camps for Indigenous peoples called “reservations,” as well as “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana, our survival depends on seeing this violent, barbarian behemoth for what it is. We must have no sentimental delusions about the difference between the governance of either of the two ruling class-dominated parties.

For us, both parties are ongoing criminal enterprises that are committed to one thing and one thing only: Ultimately serving the interests of the capitalist ruling class—by any means necessary!

It is in that commitment that we, the colonized, the excluded, the killable, who experience the murderous sanctions that deny us food and life preserving medicines, the killer cops who slowly snuff out our lives with their knee on our necks, the deadly military attacks that destroy our ancient nations and turn us into refugees, the subversion of our political systems, the theft of our precious resources, and the literal draining of the value of our lives through the super-exploitation of our labor.

“Both parties are ongoing criminal enterprises.”

For us, we ask, what will be the difference if Biden wins? Wasn’t Biden part of the administration that conspired with the Department of Homeland Security and Democratic mayors to repress the Occupy movement once it became clear the movement could not be co-opted?

Didn’t Obama place Assata Shakur as the first woman on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list and increase the bounty on her head? A recent release of FBI documents revealed it was during the Obama-Biden years that the “Black Identity Extremist ” label was created.

The illegal subversion of Venezuela began with Bush, but intensified under Obama. The sanctions slapped on that country—that were expanded under Trump—have resulted in tens of thousands of innocent people dying from lack of medicines. It was the Obama-Biden administration that decided to devote over $1 trillion to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next decade.

Democratic and Republican strategists support the white supremacist NATO structure, the “Pivot to Asia,” and the insane theory being advanced by military strategists, who are wargaming a nuclear “first-strike” strategy against Russia and China that they believe can be successful in destroying those countries’ intercontinental ballistic missiles while the missiles are still in their launchers. That is why the Trump administration pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and has so far failed to renew the START nuclear treaty with Russia, scheduled to end in February 2021.

“It was during the Obama-Biden years that the ‘Black Identity Extremist’ label was created.”

Not being confused by the liberal framework that advances a cartoonish understanding of fascism that Trump’s bombastic theatrics evokes in the public imagination, it is clear the threat of increased authoritarianism, the use of military force, repression, subversion, illegal sanctions, theft, and rogue state gangsterism is on the agenda of both capitalist parties in the U.S. and the Western European colonizer states.

No matter who sits in the white peoples’ house after the election, we will have to continue to fight for social justice, democracy, and People(s)-Centered Human Rights.

It is important to re-state that last sentence because the left in the U.S. is experiencing extreme anxiety with the events around the election. They want and need to have order, stability and good feelings about their nation again. But for those of us from the colonized zones of non-being, anything that creates psychological chaos, disorder, delegitimization, disruption of the settler-colonial state and demoralization of its supporters is of no concern for us.

Unlike the house slave who will fight harder than the Massa to put out the flames in the plantation house, we call to the ancestors to send a strong breeze.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shim award for uncompromised integrity in journalism

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berniesrevolution · 7 years ago

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POLITICO

Charleston, W.Va.—After pushing 90 for the better part of an hour to get here to the gold-domed Capitol from his home in rugged, woebegone Logan County, the former Army paratrooper and current state senator with 36 tattoos, bulging muscles and a dry-razored buzz cut jumped out of his red Jeep and bounded across a parking lot toward the snaking line of hundreds of striking teachers.

They rushed to shake his hand.

They clamored for snapshots and selfies.

They waved homemade signs. “HEAR US NOW.” “SUPPORT WV TEACHERS.” “UNITED WE STAND.”

“We got your back, you got ours!” one teacher called out, and they roared.

“You keep making that noise, ladies and gentlemen!” he bellowed back. “This is what union is right here! Hey! Shoulder to shoulder! Don’t take a step back! Y’all deserve it!”

As he tried to make his way through the pulsing crowd, another teacher stopped him, asking him to sign with a Sharpie the chest of her shirt that had on it a picture of him looking stalwart and stern in his military fatigues.

The people chanted his name.

“Oh-jed-ah!”

Richard Ojeda, hard j, is a first-term lawmaker from southern West Virginia. He’s 47 years old, a husband and a father of two, and he’s won exactly one general election in his life. He is running now for the open seat in West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, which seems like a monumentally precocious act for somebody who has served slightly more than a year in any elected office at all. But Ojeda has made his mark on the volatile politics in this state with a stunning suddenness. Though he is a Democrat in a legislature in which his party is outnumbered almost 2-to-1, he spearheaded in his freshman session the passage of a bill legalizing medical marijuana. Then, this January, he stood on the Senate floor and argued in fiery speeches that energy companies should pony up more taxes so teachers could get better benefits and pay. A strike, he warned, was not out of the question. A month later, teachers from all 55 counties walked off the job—a first in the history of the state—instantly making Ojeda the father of one of the region’s largest labor actions of the past 30 years.

In hard red, Donald Trump-loving West Virginia, Ojeda has become a kind of one-man blue wave, threatening to defy a conventional belief that the only kind of Democrat that can win big races here—or anywhere, for that matter, in Appalachia or the industrial Midwest—is somebody like Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the United States Senate, a pragmatic, pro-business social conservative. Because here is Ojeda, a pro-labor, twang-talking, plainspoken populist, scrambling the state’s recent rightward shift by harkening back to a deeper, more radical vein of its rich political history. In the early 20th century, miners fought and died for higher wages and safer working conditions while wearing red bandanas and carrying Winchester rifles. Now, teachers are the new miners; in fact, in a place all but defined by its coal heritage, there are some 20,000 teachers and fewer than 12,000 miners, making the teachers—plus the 13,000 staff who walked off the job with them—by far the largest union in the state. And here, as I hustled after Ojeda into the bustling Capitol, the striking school employees weren’t armed—but many were dressed in red. And some of them had knotted around their necks those bandanas.

Their songs of unrest ricocheted off the marble of the rotunda inside.

“We’re not gonna take it … we’re not gonna take it … we’re not gonna take it anymooooooore!”

With me and Ojeda in this crush of energy was Krystal Ball, the former MSNBC host who’s the president of the People’s House Project, a PAC that has endorsed Ojeda’s congressional candidacy. In the middle of the maelstrom, Ball had to shout to be heard. “He’s going to win!” she announced. She said this with a certainty that startled me. I had to lean in to make out her words. “And it’s going to be an instant national story! And Richard is going to be an instant national figure and face of the Democrats!”

I gave Ball a skeptical look. West Virginia, after all, voted overwhelmingly for Trump, and the 3rd District was the most pro-Trump district. The Cook Political Report doesn’t even label the district as “competitive.” Evan Jenkins, the current GOP representative, won so decisively in 2016, he decided to run for the right to run against Manchin for Senate. And in Logan County, where Ojeda grew up and still lives, just shy of 80 percent of voters chose Trump—and one of them was Ojeda himself. He’s not on Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton’s tally of veterans he has endorsed, and he’s not on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” list, either. He’s been a mostly limited fundraiser, too, in part because he takes no money from anybody except individual donors and labor unions. There is next to no standard reason to think Ojeda could win—except for the visceral evidence that was swirling around us. The more than 5,000 teachers screaming his name. Ball looked at me and laughed.

By this time, we had lost him. When I spotted his skin-shorn flattop sticking out of the crowd, Ojeda was surrounded by a rapt half-moon of teachers. His eyes were wide, and he was jabbing the air with a finger. “We are on the next Saudi Arabia!” he was hollering. “They’ve said that—the energy people said that! So, if we’re on the next Saudi Arabia, obviously they want it to be just like Saudi Arabia, where you have about 10 people driving around in Lamborghinis and everybody else eatin’ sand sandwiches! That’s what they want. Guess what? No!” He told them the people who give him money are regular folks. Labor unions. That’s it. “I don’t give a shit about Big Energy!” he yelled. They erupted again in applause.

Over the course of the next two days, the first two days of the West Virginia teachers’ strike that remained unresolved as of Thursday, I saw signs that read: “OVER WORKED UNDER PAID” and “TEACHERS ARE WORTH MORE.” One just said, “Help Us Ojeda. You’re our Only Hope!” I heard people ask him to run for governor, so they could vote for him, too, even if they lived in the northern two-thirds of the state. I heard him described as a “rock star” and a “folk hero.” I even watched one teacher propose to him. Literally get down on one knee and ask him to marry her. It was the only time I saw him (a little) flustered and (very briefly) speechless. “I’m married!” he finally blurted out. And everywhere I went with him, it was never too long before that chant started up again.

“Oh-jed-ah!”

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #politico #ojeda #West Virginia #organized labor #labor movement #populism #economic populism #strike

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xtruss · 4 years ago

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George W. Bush, the War Criminal, Is Right About Trump, but Still Wrong About the World

It’s not useful to understand global affairs in the broadest possible terms, as a struggle between good and evil.

— By Nicholas Lemann | September 14, 2021

In Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the war criminal Bush referred to “the audacity of evil,” demonstrating that he still thinks in piously Manichaean terms.Photograph by Ryan Collerd / Bloomberg / Getty

George W. Bush, the least visible of our five living ex-Presidents, turned up in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the site of the crash of United Flight 93, for a commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and gave brief remarks that brought him a measure of unaccustomed liberal love. Without explicitly naming names, Bush compared the Al Qaeda attackers back then to the Capitol rioters of January 6th. Both, he said, are “children of the same foul spirit,” whom we have a “duty to confront.” Bush didn’t name Donald Trump, either, but it was no mystery whom he had in mind when he said, “So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together.”

It has always been clear that Bush detests Trump. It isn’t only that Trump has consistently directed his trademark bully-boy verbal cruelties at the Bush family, it’s also that he made it obvious that Bush’s ancestral Party contains what Bush, at Shanksville, called “a malign force.” Either the political cause to which Bush has devoted his life has turned sour, or he was always deluding himself about the nature of the Party he was leading. That can’t be pleasant to contemplate.

Bush spoke in Pennsylvania about the spirit of national unity that prevailed after 9/11, but that was a natural temporary reaction to the country’s having been attacked. Trumpism didn’t emerge out of nowhere. Anti-immigrant, religiously intolerant, conspiratorial, and racist elements have been present in American politics for a very long time, and since the defection of the South from the Democratic Party they have found their primary home in the G.O.P. The Bush family’s own course followed that of the Party: from Northeastern to Southwestern, from high-Protestant to born-again, from liberal internationalist to bellicose.

Even before 9/11, there was a war for Bush’s soul going on. He spent the weeks preceding the attacks publicly agonizing over whether to permit federally funded embryonic-stem-cell research before landing on a clunky compromise that was a sign of his recognition of the power of the evangelical movement. In foreign policy, those who believed that Bush’s father should have unseated Saddam Hussein back in 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, were dreaming of having another go at him. Multilateralists were vying with the one-superpower crowd. The attacks settled these arguments, all in one direction. The Bush Administration went to the dark side, in Dick Cheney’s unforgettable phrase, on detention, torture, and civil liberties. It authorized new surveillance programs at home and abroad. It alienated many of its traditional allies. And, most consequential of all, it decided to conquer and occupy first Afghanistan and then Iraq.

The attacks brought out Bush’s aggressive instincts, but he must have believed that all the moves he was making were going to work out. Only nine days after the attacks, in a speech in which he introduced the phrase “war on terror,” he began laying out his argument. A grand global battle between good and evil had begun; people everywhere, especially in the Arab Middle East, longed to live in an American-style capitalist democracy, and looked to the United States to bring them there. Osama bin Laden’s murderous fanaticism represented the only real alternative to the American way. At Shanksville, Bush demonstrated that he still thinks in these piously Manichaean terms—he referred to “the audacity of evil.” His pride in his big-picture clarity and his decisiveness, it’s now obvious, opened the way to enormous mistakes that had lasting consequences.

American failures in Afghanistan and Iraq—and, at the end of Bush’s Presidency, the financial crisis and the onset of the Great Recession—surely superpowered whatever mistrust of leaders and institutions was already there, and led to a surge of scapegoating, high (élites) and low (immigrants). Both of the major parties produced unexpected outsider superstars—Bernie Sanders, for the Democrats, and Trump, for the Republicans—but the populist triumph was more complete in Bush’s party, where people like him and his successor as the Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, are now outsiders, while Barack Obama and Joe Biden remain the Democrats’ marquee figures.

There is poignancy in Bush’s laments about Trumpism; he isn’t merely pretending to find it repellent. The lesson here isn’t, however, what Bush appears to think it is. Political leadership is about achieving tangible good results that make a difference in people’s lives, not offering a message of unity, respect, and honor (though that’s nice, too). It’s not useful to understand world affairs in the broadest possible terms, as a struggle between good and evil. The 9/11 attackers and the January 6th rioters were actually evil in quite different ways that call for quite different responses. What would help the most in taking us to a truly post-Trump world would be having a government that does not conspicuously fail at its largest tasks. Let’s hope the Biden Administration can provide that. The Bush Administration did not.

— The New Yorker | Nicholas Lemann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. His most recent book is “Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream.”

How the Bushes Misunderstood Criminal Dick Cheney

— By Nicholas Lemann | November 12, 2015

George W. Bush and his father underestimated the extent to which Dick Cheney was dedicated to his own political and foreign-policy agendas.Photograph By Mark Wilson / Getty Images

are probably too quick to declare any family that has produced more than one elected officeholder to be a political dynasty: many other democratic countries (India, the Philippines, Argentina) are far more dynastic than the United States. In 1979, the Kennedys were our leading political dynasty. Ted Kennedy was preparing to run for President, and many people thought it was inevitable that he would win.

Meanwhile, in Texas, George Herbert Walker Bush, who had lost two races for the U.S. Senate, a body to which his father had belonged, had launched a quixotic-seeming Presidential campaign of his own. His eldest son, George W. Bush, had just lost his first race for political office, a congressional campaign in West Texas. Bush’s best friend, James Baker, had lost his only political campaign, for Texas attorney general. It looked as if the Bushes had been right to decide that Texas would be a more propitious environment for Republicans than their former home, Connecticut, but had done so prematurely. If Ronald Reagan had not chosen George Bush as his Vice-President, there would be no Bush dynasty today. And if Bush’s fellow-Texan Ross Perot had not run against him, in 1992, there would be no Clinton dynasty, either.

Still, the political Bushes appear to be a family business whose deliberations are tantalizingly out of the public’s reach. So it wasn’t surprising that the first snippets released from Jon Meacham’s biography of George H. W. Bush were about what Bush 41 really thought of Bush 43’s Presidency. That’s what we’ve all been wondering about.

The Bushes do a brisk internal trade in advisers. Condoleezza Rice worked for 41 and 43. So did Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. Robert Zoellick and Stephen Hadley worked for 41 and 43, and are now advising Jeb Bush’s Presidential campaign. These are just a few of dozens of examples, from all realms of policy and politics. What the Bushes expect from these people is not just competence but loyalty. There’s family, and then there’s staff. (Only one person, James Baker, has ever transcended those tight categories.) Staff pursue the family’s interests, not their own.

Bush 41’s news-making remark to Meacham was, in effect, an accusation that Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had violated this cardinal rule during Bush 43’s Administration. Speaking about Cheney, Bush told Meacham, “He had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer. … It just showed me that you cannot do it that way. The president should not have that worry.” Bush had never liked or trusted—or hired—Rumsfeld, so in his case the lack of loyalty was no surprise. But Cheney, he told Meacham, had changed. “He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with.”

Most Cheney watchers, including Bush, believe that Cheney changed from an utterly reliable servitor into an ideologue, partly as a result of the September 11th attacks. Cheney himself offered up this theory when Meacham asked him to respond to Bush’s remarks. “No question I was much harder-line after 9/11 than I was before, especially when we got into this whole area of terrorism, nukes, and WMD,” he said.

Don’t be so sure.

George W. Bush, in his pre-Presidential days, was even more preoccupied than his father with extirpating aides who, in his view, had their own agendas. Partly because he felt his father had not been well served by the independent political consultants he used in his unsuccessful reëlection campaign, he insisted that Karl Rove sell his consulting firm and work as a full-time campaign employee in 2000. Cheney, who at first served as the chairman of George W. Bush’s Vice-Presidential search committee, came highly recommended by Bush 41. As the C.E.O. of Halliburton, he was living in Texas at the time, rather than in Washington, and he projected a stolid, phlegmatic trustworthiness. He hardly ever said anything, so how could he have an agenda?

The leading candidate for Bush’s Vice-President was said to be the former Senator John Danforth, of Missouri, a moderate Republican. They met, with Cheney briefly present, something didn’t click, and Cheney got the job instead. After the election, the former Senator Dan Coats, of Indiana, a Christian conservative, was expected to be named the Secretary of Defense. He and Bush met (again, with Cheney present), something didn’t click, and Cheney’s old friend Rumsfeld got the job instead. Cheney was also immediately permitted—as Bush 41 pointed out to Meacham—to create his own shadow national-security staff in the White House, headed by Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Long before 9/11, Cheney had a hyper-awareness of threats to the American order. This may have come from his experience as a graduate student, at the University of Wisconsin, during the peak period of student radicalism there, or from having run, with Rumsfeld, the most left-wing agency of the federal government, the long-departed Office of Economic Opportunity, in the early nineteen-seventies. In any case, this attitude was amply reflected in Cheney’s voting record after he was elected to Congress, in 1978, and in his interviews and speeches.

The most consequential examples of Cheney’s conservatism come from his years in the Bush 41 Administration. As the Secretary of Defense, he hired Paul Wolfowitz as one of the top officials in the Pentagon, and he tilted away from Mikhail Gorbachev and toward Boris Yeltsin because he believed that Yeltsin would push harder for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After that happened, Cheney sponsored a study by Wolfowitz calling for the maintenance of a one-superpower world in the post-Soviet era as the core principle of U.S. foreign policy.

George H. W. Bush evidently didn’t notice any of this, because Cheney was so competent and reassuring. George W. Bush didn’t notice either. It’s pretty clear that both of them figured it out later, after Cheney and his allies had adeptly shaped the first couple of years of the U.S. response to 9/11—the Patriot Act, the inexorable road to the Iraq War, and all the rest. The lesson is that, if you think somebody has changed fundamentally, especially somebody over the age of sixty, it probably means you didn’t know the person as well as you thought. And that was because you were looking mainly for a quality that was important to you, not for what was important to him.

Cheney’s Tortured Facts

The former vice president offers misleading spin in defending CIA interrogation tactics.

— By Eugene Kiely | December 16, 2014 | FactCheck.Org

Summary

Former Vice President Dick Cheney offered a spirited defense of CIA interrogation tactics used in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and denounced a recent Senate report, which criticized those techniques, as a “crock.” But in presenting his case, Cheney often gave a one-sided and misleading account of the facts.

Cheney claimed the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on captured members of al Qaeda and the Taliban did not violate international agreements, citing opinions from the Justice Department. But the Supreme Court later ruled that detainees were entitled to minimum protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Cheney said he “believed” that rectal rehydration or feeding of some detainees was done “for medical reasons.” But the Senate report concluded otherwise, citing CIA officials who said the practice discouraged hunger strikes and resulted in “total control over the detainee.” Several physicians also have rejected the medical necessity of the practice.

Cheney wrongly claimed that the U.S. prosecuted Japanese soldiers “for a lot of stuff” but “not for waterboarding.” While they weren’t solely prosecuted for waterboarding, Japanese soldiers were prosecuted for torturing American prisoners, including the use of “water torture.”

Cheney repeated an old, exaggerated claim that Saddam Hussein “had a 10-year relationship with al Qaeda.” While there were sporadic contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda in the 1990s, the CIA and independent government reports concluded there was no evidence of a working relationship between the two regimes.

Cheney overstated the number of former Guantanamo detainees who had returned to terrorists activities. Cheney put the figure at 30 percent, but the confirmed number is closer to 17 percent.

Cheney said the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators failed to interview key CIA officials. That’s true, but committee investigators were deferring to Justice Department investigators who were pursuing possible criminal charges. And Senate staff did have access to transcripts of dozens of interviews with CIA officials.

Analysis

In interviews with Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Dec. 14 and Jake Tapper on CNN on Dec. 12, Cheney blasted the Senate report, released in early December, as partisan and “flawed.” He defended the Bush administration’s backing of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and other CIA practices that Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein called torture “under any common meaning of the term.”

Violation of Geneva Conventions?

Cheney relies on since-discredited opinions from the White House’s Department of Justice legal team to contend the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA on captured members of al Qaeda and the Taliban did not violate international agreements generally and the Geneva Conventions specifically. The Supreme Court has since ruled that the detainees were entitled to minimum protections provided under the Geneva Conventions, including prohibitions against torture and humiliation.

In recent interviews, Cheney has twice claimed the techniques used by the CIA did not run afoul of international agreements.

On “Meet the Press” on Dec. 14, Cheney denied that the CIA techniques could be defined as “torture” and said the administration “did not want to cross that line into where we were violating some international agreement that we’d signed up to.”

Cheney, Dec. 14: We were very careful to stop short of torture. The Senate has seen fit to label their report torture. But we worked hard to stay short of that definition.

Chuck Todd: Well, what is that definition?

Cheney: Definitions, and one that was provided by the Office of Legal Counsel, we went specifically to them because we did not want to cross that line into where we were violating some international agreement that we’d signed up to. They specifically authorized and okayed, for example, exactly what we did. All of the techniques that were authorized by the president were, in effect, blessed by the Justice Department opinion that we could go forward with those without, in fact, committing torture.

Two days earlier, on Fox News, Cheney made a similar comment in response to a question asked by Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier:

Baier, Dec. 12: Is there anything to the Geneva Convention, to the world rule of law on this?

Cheney: Sure there is. But remember, the terrorists were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. And under those circumstances, they were not entitled to the normal kinds of courtesies and treatment you would accord to those.

Cheney is correct that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued memos in 2002 that provided legal arguments that support Cheney’s position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees captured in the war in Afghanistan. For example, in a Jan. 9, 2002, memo, John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general, concluded that international treaties did not protect members of al Qaeda or the Taliban militia. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales also issued a memo about two weeks later to President George W. Bush backing up the Justice Department’s opinion, and recommending Bush declare captured members of al Qaeda and the Taliban outside Geneva Convention protections.

But those opinions did not go unchallenged, either inside or outside the administration.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, wrote a memo to the White House on Jan. 26, 2002, arguing that such a posture would “reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general.” He also warned it would spark a “negative international reaction” and “undermine public support among critical allies.”

Geoffrey Corn, a professor at South Texas College of Law and an expert in military law, told us via email that Cheney’s comments “oversimplified one of the most complex legal issues that arose out of our military response to 9/11.”

Corn says Cheney’s argument that detainees were not entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions rests on a Department of Justice interpretation that was “considered highly dubious by many government experts, including military legal experts who had devoted years to the study of this law,” and “opened up abusive treatment options that were fundamentally inconsistent with longstanding Department of Defense and national policy.” And ultimately, he said, it is an interpretation that was “repudiated by the Supreme Court in the 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.”

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court concluded that the Geneva Conventions’ Common Article 3 — which requires humane treatment of all captive combatants — applied to the detainees at Guantanamo.

As our fact-checking colleagues at PolitiFact noted, while it is accurate that the detainees may not have been entitled to the full measure of protection afforded under the Geneva Conventions to combatants in traditional international conflicts, that doesn’t mean they weren’t protected by minimal levels of protections afforded to everyone.

As the International Committee of the Red Cross puts it, Common Article 3 “requires humane treatment for all persons in enemy hands, without any adverse distinction.” Among those minimal protections are prohibitions against “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School who has written extensively on international law and the use of force, told us in an email that Cheney is “quite wrong in saying the U.S. violated no law in employing coercive measures of interrogation.”

“The Geneva Conventions absolutely forbids coercive measures in interrogation,” said O’Connell. “A number of human rights treaties forbid torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. The self-serving memos produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel were simply wrong — which had to be obvious to anyone reading them.”

In an opinion piece she wrote for the American Society of International Law, of which she is a member, O’Connell listed the various international treaties that forbid torture and humiliation of prisoners or detainees (see point 3).

“In non-international armed conflict, common Article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions also prohibits torture as well as other violence to life and person, including cruel treatment and outrages upon personal dignity,” O’Connell wrote. “These are absolute prohibitions; there are no exceptions.”

Cheney accurately describes a position that was based on legal opinions provided by Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel at that time. But legal experts say that opinion was dubious then, and has since been repudiated by the Supreme Court.

Rectal Rehydration/Feeding for ‘Medical Reasons’?

One of the most unnerving findings in the Senate report was that “[a]t least five CIA detainees were subjected to ‘rectal rehydration’ or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity” (page 4).

When he was asked about those specific practices on “Meet the Press,” Cheney challenged the findings of the report, stating, “I believe it was for medical reasons.”

Here’s the full exchange with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd:

Todd, Dec. 14: Let me go through some of those techniques that were used, Majid Khan, was subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration. It included two bottles of Ensure, later in the same day Majid Khan’s lunch tray consisting of hummus, pasta, sauce, nuts and raisins was pureed and rectally infused. … Does that meet the definition of torture?

Cheney: That does not meet the definition of what was used in the program …

Todd: I understand. But does that meet the definition of torture in your mind?

Cheney: In my mind, I’ve told you what meets the definition of torture. It’s what 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11. What was done here apparently certainly was not one of the techniques that was approved. I believe it was done for medical reasons.

In an interview on CNN on Dec. 11, former CIA Director Michael Hayden was even more explicit in saying the procedures were medically motivated.

“That was a medical procedure,” Hayden said when asked by host Jake Tapper about rectal rehydration/feeding. “That was done because of detainee health — that the people responsible there for the health of these detainees saw that they were becoming dehydrated. They had limited options in which to go do this. It was intravenous with needles, which would be dangerous with a non-cooperative detainee; it was through the nasal passages.”

He went on to say that it was “not part of the interrogation program, not designed to soften him up for any questioning.” Hayden claimed the Senate report’s conclusion was based on “one email with one very bad-taste comment.”

But there’s more. Let’s review the half-dozen references to this activity in the Senate report, outlined for us by Feinstein’s office.

Page 73: “At one point, al-Nashiri [a detainee] launched a short lived hunger strike that resulted in the CIA force feeding him rectally.” (Source: CIA cable, May 23, 2004.)

Page 82: CIA’s chief of interrogations “ordered the rectal rehydration of KSM [detainee Khalid Shaykh Mohammed] without a determination of medical need, a procedure that the chief of interrogations would later characterize as illustrative of the interrogator’s ‘total control over the detainee.’ ” (Source: CIA cable, March 5, 2003; interview by the CIA inspector general, March 27, 2003.)

Page 83: In March 2003, Khalid Shaykh Mohammed was also subjected to additional rectal rehydration (Source: CIA cable, date redacted), which a CIA officer from the Office of Medical Services “described as helping to ‘clear a person’s head’ and effective in getting KSM to talk.” (Source: CIA email, March 6, 2003, names of sender and recipients redacted.)

Page 100, footnote 584: According to CIA records, listed in this footnote, the CIA rectally rehydrated and/or rectally fed al-Nashiri, Khalid Shaykh Mohammed, Majid Khan, Abu Zubaydah and Marwan al-Jabbur. Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khallad bin Attash and Adnan al-Libi “were threatened with rectal rehydration … CIA medical officers discussed rectal rehydration as a means of behavior control. As one officer wrote, ‘[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal infusion on ending the water refusal in a similar case.’ ” (Source: multiple CIA cables, dates redacted; the last quote was from a CIA email, February 2004, names of sender and recipients redacted.)

Page 100, footnote 584: “The CIA’s June 2013 response to the study does not address the use of rectal feeding with CIA detainees, but defends the use of rectal rehydration as a ‘well acknowledged medical technique.’ CIA leadership, including General Counsel Scott Muller and DDO [Deputy Director for Operations] James Pavitt, was also alerted to allegations that rectal exams were conducted with ‘excessive force’ on two detainees at DETENTION SITE COBALT.” A CIA attorney “was asked to follow up, although CIA records do not indicate any resolution of the inquiry.” (Source: multiple CIA emails, dates and names of sender and recipients redacted.)

Pages 114-115: Beginning in March 2004, one of the detainees, Majid Khan, “engaged in a series of hunger strikes and attempts at self-mutilation that required significant attention from CIA detention site personnel. Medical personnel implemented various techniques to provide fluids and nutrients, including the use of a nasogastric tube and the provision of intravenous fluids. CIA records indicate that Majid Khan cooperated with the feedings and was permitted to infuse the fluids and nutrients himself. After approximately three weeks, the CIA developed a more aggressive treatment regimen ‘without unnecessary conversation.’ Majid Khan was then subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration, which included two bottles of Ensure. Later that same day, Majid Khan’s ‘lunch tray,’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins, was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused. Additional sessions of rectal feeding and hydration followed.” (Source: two CIA cables on Sept. 23, 2004.)

Cheney and Hayden both pointed out that rectal rehydration/feeding was not part of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, that critics say amounted to torture. In at least three cases, the procedure was initiated in response to a hunger strike. And so the primary goal was not interrogation, but to keep the detainees alive.

However, the comments from CIA medical officers suggest the method used — rectal rehydration or feeding as opposed to intravenous feeding or hydration — was viewed as a way to discourage others from engaging in hunger strikes or dissuading those who were on a hunger strike from continuing it. It may not have been part of the prescribed interrogation program, but the comments highlighted in the report show the CIA’s chief of interrogations at least saw the side benefit of it exhibiting “total control over the detainee,” while a CIA officer from the Office of Medical Services noted that it helped to “clear a person’s head.”

Moreover, the question of whether it amounted to torture or abuse does not depend on it being part of the prescribed interrogation program, or even being used as an interrogation technique at all.

The New York-based Physicians for Human Rights, for example, has condemned the use of rectal rehydration/feeding described in the report as “sexual assault masquerading as medical treatment.”

“Contrary to the CIA’s assertions, there is no clinical indication to use rectal rehydration and feeding over oral or intravenous administration of fluids and nutrients,” Dr. Vincent Iacopino, PHR’s senior medical advisor, stated in a press release. “This is a form of sexual assault masquerading as medical treatment. In the absence of medical necessity, it is clear that the only purpose behind this humiliating and invasive procedure is to inflict physical and mental pain.”

In a Washington Post story, Thomas Burke, a Harvard Medical School professor and emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, contested the argument that IV hydration or feeding would be, as Hayden put it, “dangerous with a non-cooperative detainee.” Every day in the United States, he told the Post, health workers encounter uncooperative, belligerent or mentally disturbed patients who need hydration or sustenance. “And [in] none of them do we put a tube in their bottom,” he said.

Dr. Steven Miles, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School and board member of the Center for Victims of Torture told the International Business Times that the procedure was “a variation on a medieval form of torture in which the intestines were swollen up with fluid in order to cause pain. You can’t feed somebody this way. And so, for the U.S. government to claim that this is some sort of feeding technique, that’s just totally bizarre. Because there is no physiological way for any nutrients to be absorbed in the colon, any medical participation in this rectal feeding procedure is medical participation in torture.”

Japanese Prosecutions for Waterboarding

Cheney also wrongly claimed that the U.S. did not prosecute Japanese soldiers for waterboarding, as Chuck Todd had said.

Todd: When you say waterboarding is not torture, then why did we prosecute Japanese soldiers in World War II for waterboarding?

Cheney: For a lot of stuff. Not for waterboarding. They did an awful lot of other stuff. To draw some kind of moral equivalent between waterboarding judged by our Justice Department not to be torture and what the Japanese did with the Bataan Death March and the slaughter of thousands of Americans, with the rape of Nanking and all of the other crimes they committed, that’s an outrage.

Perhaps not solely for waterboarding, but Japanese soldiers were prosecuted for torturing American prisoners, including committing acts akin to waterboarding.

In his 2007 essay “Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts,” Circuit Judge Evan J. Wallach, writing for the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, documented cases from 1947 in which Japanese defendants Yukio Asano, Seitara Hata and Takeo Kita were each charged by a U.S. Military Commission with violating the laws and customs of war for committing torture, including “water torture.”

“The so-called ‘water treatment’ was commonly applied” by the Japanese, according to an International Military Tribunal for the Far East report. “The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach until he lost consciousness.”

And such “water torture,” Wallach wrote, “loomed large in the evidence” presented in the cases against Asano, Hata and Kita.

Hata, a first lieutenant surgeon, was specifically accused of torturing Morris O. Killough, an American prisoner of war, by “beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils.” He was also accused of beating three others as well as “forcing water into their mouths and noses, and by pressing lighted cigarettes against their bodies.”

Asano and Kita were also accused of forcing water into the mouths and noses of prisoners.

All three men were eventually convicted. Hata was sentenced to 25 years confinement at hard labor, and both Asano and Kita received 15-year sentences.

The late Sen. Ted Kennedy actually mentioned the case involving Asano during a speech on the Senate floor on Sept. 28, 2006. That was before Wallach’s essay was published in 2007.

Saddam Hussein’s ‘Relationship’ with al Qaeda

In stating the Bush administration’s case for going to war with Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, and warned of a “sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network.” Powell specifically cited Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the link between Iraq and al Qaeda, mentioning Zarqawi no fewer than 20 times in his speech. “Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” Powell said.

History has proven Powell wrong. As we will explain shortly, there was no working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Nevertheless, Cheney said in his interview on “Meet the Press” that he did not regret attacking Iraq and repeated the claim that Hussein “had a 10-year relationship with al Qaeda.”

During the interview, Todd played a 1994 video clip of Cheney defending President George H.W. Bush’s decision not to remove Saddam Hussein from power during the Gulf War in 1991. In that clip, Cheney said the region is “very volatile” and an attack on Iraq’s central government would have been “a quagmire” for the U.S.

Todd then asked Cheney whether he regretted the decision to attack Iraq in 2003 under the second President Bush.

Cheney, Dec. 14: No, a lot has happened. A lot has happened between that time, 9/11, for example, happened. We got to the point where we were very concerned about the possible linkage between terrorists on the one hand and weapons of mass destruction on the other. Saddam Hussein had previously had twice nuclear programs going. He produced and used weapons of mass destruction. And he had a 10-year relationship with al Qaeda. All of things came into play.

However, the CIA, the inspector general of the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee (controlled at the time by Republicans) and the bipartisan 9/11 Commission all came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of a working relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda.

There were sporadic contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda in the late 1990s, as described in a 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission, which was chaired by Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey. But that report concluded that there was “no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.”

Two reports issued by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee came to the same conclusion.

A heavily redacted July 2004 committee report concluded (on page 346) that the CIA “reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’ida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship.” The committee (on page 4) said its conclusions were based in part on a year-long review of 10 years of intelligence community assessments.

In its second report, which was released in September 2006, the Senate Intelligence Committee cited further evidence that there was no working relationship between the two regimes. In fact, the committee report described the two as wary rivals, citing a June 2002 CIA report titled “Iraq and al-Qa’ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship” that said “the ties between Saddam and bin Laden appear much like those between rival intelligence services, with each trying to exploit the other for its own benefit” (page 64 of the committee report).

In a section titled “Iraqi Links to Al-Qa’ida,” the committee report cited these high-level sources to refute the Bush administration’s claim of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda:

An Oct. 25, 2005, CIA report titled “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the Former Iraqi Regime” contradicted Powell’s claim in his U.N. speech that al-Zarqawi was the link between Iraq and al Qaeda. The CIA report said prior to the war “the [Iraqi] regime did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates” (page 92).

A Dec. 6, 2005, interview with the “lead” Defense Intelligence Agency analyst “who follows the issue of possible connections between the Iraqi government and al-Qa’ida.” The analyst was quoted as saying the DIA “continues to maintain that there was no partnership between the two organizations” (page 63).

A Dec. 21, 2005, report by the inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency that said: “The data reveal few indications of an established relationship between al-Qa’ida and Saddam Hussein’s regime before Sept. 11, 2001” (page 62).

Former Detainees ‘Back on the Battlefield’

The former vice president was also wrong when he discussed former Guantanamo detainees who have returned to terrorists activities.

Cheney, Dec. 14: Of the 600 and some people who were released out of Guantanamo, 30 percent roughly ended up back on the battlefield.

The number of former Guantanamo detainees confirmed to have re-engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities is actually 107, according to the most recent semi-annual report by the Director of National Intelligence. That’s 17.3 percent of the 620 detainees who have been released or transferred. The figure is current as of July 15.

Cheney arrives at his 30 percent rate by adding in 77 former detainees who are now “suspected” of re-engaging, even though those suspicions can be based on unverified reports, or reports from a single source.

Cheney has been doing this for years. We first noted his habit of ignoring the distinction between “confirmed” and “suspected” recidivists in May 2009.

He also failed to mention this important fact: Many of the 107 former detainees confirmed to have returned to terrorist activities are either dead or back in custody. The DNI report says 23 of them are dead and 25 are in custody.

Also worth noting is that nearly all those who Cheney says have “ended up back on the battlefield” were released during the Bush administration. Only six “confirmed” and one “suspected” recidivist were released from Guantanamo under President Obama.

CIA Interviews

Cheney also told only part of the story on “Meet the Press” when he said the Intelligence Committee’s investigators failed to interview key CIA officials, a point raised often by other critics of the report.

Cheney, Dec. 14: The report is seriously flawed. They didn’t talk to anybody who knew anything about the program. They didn’t talk to anybody within the program.

That’s true as far as it goes. What Cheney failed to mention, however, is that the committee investigators were deferring to Justice Department investigators who were pursuing possible criminal charges, and that the Senate staff had access to transcripts of dozens of interviews with CIA officials conducted by the agency’s own inspector general and others.

A Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, explained that in the same “Meet the Press” program just before Cheney’s appearance:

: The report and the Justice Department inquiry went on at the same time. So we weren’t able to interview the C.I.A. … Suffice it to say, I’ll speak for myself and my colleagues, we would be happy to have talked to them.

Another member of the committee, Sen. Angus King of Maine, made the same point in a Dec. 9 interview on CNN:

King, Dec. 9: [T]he reason the interviews weren’t done was that the Justice Department was preparing whether or not to charge people in the CIA, and the committee was forbidden to conduct these interviews. They couldn’t do it. However, the committee did have access to 150 interviews done by the CIA’s inspector general, plus the transcripts of the many times that CIA officials came and testified before the committee. So there were, in effect, interviews. We just didn’t ask the question. But the interviews were there, plus 6 million pages of documents. And it’s chilling.

— King is an independent, but sits with Democrats in the Senate.

— by Robert Farley, Brooks Jackson, D’Angelo Gore and Eugene Kiely

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statetalks · 4 years ago

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Which 12 Republicans Voted Against Trump

Sen Susan Collins Of Maine

12 Republicans Vote With Democrats In Terminating Trumps National Emergency | Hardball | MSNBC

Collins;co-sponsored the resolution out of concern for the precedent an emergency declaration would set for the powers of executive branch.;The Senate appropriator known for bucking her party, splitting with leadership on efforts to repeal the 2010 health care law in 2017. That independent streak has become part of Collins brand in Maine, where she remains popular.

But the four-term senator is likely to face her toughest re-election next year, with Democrats raising millions of dollars for a yet-to-be-determined challenger after she voted for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Collins is a top target in a state Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and Democrats will be arguing that shes voted with her party much more often than not. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates her re-election Tilts Republican.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who announced their opposition to the election of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual winner of the election, as the President of the United States. It also includes former Republicans who left the party due to their opposition to Trump and as well as Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. It includes Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the nominee. Some of the Republicans on this list threw their support to Trump after he won the presidential election, while many of them continue to oppose Trump. Offices listed are those held at the time of the 2016 election.

Watch: Sen Susan Collins Explains Just Why 12 Republicans Voted Against Trumps Emergency Declaration

On Thursday, prior to the Senates 59-41 vote against President Trumps emergency declaration for border wall funding, Sen. Susan Collins detailed the reasoning behind her vote :

Collins spoke about the way in which the courts have determined the boundaries of presidential authority, vis-a-vis Congress, using a very specific case regarding presidential seizure of property. That case was Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, which was decided in 1952:

As Justice Robert Jackson explained in his profoundly influential concurrence in that case, the question of whether a Presidents actions are constitutionally valid should be determined by examining the source of the Presidents authority

Collins continued, noting that Trumps National Emergencies Act fails to fulfill a common sense test used by a former president:

Collins also expressed concern that the declaration would take funding from critical military construction projects, although none have been named as of publication.

She concluded with a silent point, saying that this vote is not about whether or not one desires more advanced border security, but whether or not the president should have the power of the purse, which is expressly granted to Congress in Article I, section 9, clause 7 of the Constitution:

The senator from Kentucky also offered his own solution for funding border security: the Border Enforcement, Security, And Funding Enhancement Act.

President Trump vetoed the block on Friday.

You May Like: Who’s Right Democrats Or Republicans

‘a Win Is A Win’: Trump’s Defense Team Makes Remarks After Senate Votes To Acquit

Despite the acquittal, President Joe Biden said in a statement that “substance of the charge” against Trump is “not in dispute.”

“Even those opposed to the conviction, like Senate Minority Leader McConnell, believe Donald Trump was guilty of a ‘disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and ‘practically and morally responsible for provoking’ the violence unleashed on the Capitol,” Biden’s statement read in part.

The president added that “this sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant. That violence and extremism has no place in America. And that each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Saturday’s vote the largest and most bipartisan vote in any impeachment trial in history,” but noted it wasn’t enough to secure a conviction.

The trial “was about choosing country over Donald Trump, and 43 Republican members chose Trump. They chose Trump. It should be a weight on their conscience today, and it shall be a weight on their conscience in the future,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor.

With control of the Senate split 50-50, the House managers always had an uphill battle when it came to convincing enough Republicans to cross party lines and convict a former president who is still very popular with a large part of the GOP base.

Sen Lamar Alexander Of Tennessee

The retiring Tennessee lawmaker said that he supports the president on border security but that the emergency declaration sets a dangerous precedent. His declaration to take an additional $3.6 billion that Congress has appropriated for military hospitals, barracks and schools is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution that I swore an oath to support and defend, Alexander said in a statement Thursday ahead of the vote.

The three-term senator, a member of the Appropriations Committee, announced last December that he would not run for re-election in 2020.

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The 17 Republicans Who Voted To Advance The Senate Infrastructure Bill

Seventeen Republican senators voted with all 50 Democrats on Wednesday to advance a bipartisan infrastructure deal, in a win for President BidenJoe BidenElder pledges to replace Feinstein with Republican if he wins California recall electionOvernight Defense & National Security Out of Afghanistan, but stuck in limboOn The Money Delta variant wallops job marketMORE and the bipartisan group of negotiators.

The vote the first of several steps expected before the Senate decides whether or not to ultimately pass the billcomes one week after all Republicans blocked a similar move, arguing that Senate Majority Leader Charles SchumerChuck SchumerSchumer calls for action on climate after Ida floodingHouse Democrats urge Pelosi to prioritize aid for gymsProgressives launch campaign to exclude gas from Congress’s clean electricity program;MORE was rushing the process as senators tried to finalize their agreement.

But the group announced earlier Wednesday that;it had reached a final agreement with the White House for a $1.2 trillion bill over eight years, with $550 billion in new spending. Because the group is still finalizing text, the Senate is taking up a shell bill that;it will swap the language into once it is complete.

At least 10 Republicans were needed to advance the bill. In the end, Democrats were able to net 17 GOP votes:

Sen Marco Rubio Of Florida

Like many others, Rubio warned of the precedent set by Trumps national emergency.;A member of Senate Appropriations, he said in a February statement that while he agreed there was a crisis at the southern border, a future president may use this exact same tactic to impose the Green New Deal.

Rubio won re-election by 8 points in 2016 after an unsuccessful run for the GOP nomination for president. Trump carried Florida by just;1 point that year.

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Sen Rand Paul Of Kentucky

Paul announced at a GOP Lincoln Day dinner earlier this month that he would support the resolution, noting that Congress did not appropriate the funds Trump was looking to use for the border wall. If we take away those checks and balances, its a dangerous thing, the two-term senator said.

Paul has described his political views as libertarian, and has been known to break with his party on foreign policy and surveillance issues.;He was re-elected to the Senate in 2016 after a failed White House bid, and he will not face voters again until 2022.

House Republicans Join Democrats In Voting To Impeach Trump

2 Times In 2 Days Republicans Vote Against President Donald Trump | The Last Word | MSNBC

Washington Ten Republican members of the House, including one of its highest-ranking leaders, joined Democrats in voting to impeach President Trump for inciting the deadly attack on the Capitol last week by a violent mob of his supporters.;

The final vote was 232 to 197, as the 10 Republicans joined all 222 Democrats in voting in favor of the impeachment resolution.;

The article of impeachment will next be delivered to the Senate, where Mr. Trump will be placed on trial. However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the House vote that there is “simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week.”

Mr. Trump is the first president to be impeached twice. When he was;impeached;in 2019 over his attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, no House Republicans voted in favor of impeaching him. But this time, 10 members of his own party determined his actions warranted impeachment.

Here are the Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump:

Liz Cheney of Wyoming

Tom Rice of South Carolina

Fred Upton of Michigan

David Valadao of California

Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said in a statement on Tuesday that she would vote to impeach Mr. Trump after he whipped up his supporters Wednesday at a rally not far from the Capitol.

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Sen Jerry Moran Of Kansas

Moran, a member of Senate Appropriations,; shortly before Thursdays vote that he would support the resolution. I share President Trumps goal of securing our borders, but expanding the powers of the presidency beyond its constitutional limits is something I cannot support, he tweeted.; also attached photos of his handwritten notes outlining his position. Hes up for;a third term;in 2022.

Republicans Oppose Awarding Medals For Capitol Defence

Medals will still be awarded, though Republican no votes draw criticism from across political aisle.

Members of the US Republican party are coming under fire after 21 voted against a bill to award Capitol police officers gold medals for their acts during the that attempted to block the transition of power in the US.

Both the Senate and House agreed to award the medals, but the final vote in the House of Representatives was 406-21. All 21 votes votes against the bill came from Republicans, some of whom aired their differences of opinion about the events of January 6.

The riot was attended largely by supporters of former President Donald Trump who came from myriad far-right and anti-government groups, and the QAnon movement that believes Trump was chosen to defeat a cabal of international Deep State liberal elites who traffic children for their blood to stay young.

They attempted to stop a joint session of Congress from certifying President Joe Bidens electoral victory. Five died after the riot, including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, infamous for her past support of aspects of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and previously claiming that a Jewish Laser caused wildfires, voted against the bill.

I wouldnt call it an insurrection, Greene told reporters after the vote.

Greene joined Representative Thomas Massie in saying the Capitol is not a temple.

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Republicans Who Voted To Acquit Trump Used Questions Of Constitutionality As A Cover

Following the vote, McConnell gave a scathing speech condemning Trumps lies about election fraud as well as his actions on January 6, only moments after he supported acquittal.

That speech was emblematic of how many Republican senators approached the impeachment vote: Although GOP lawmakers were critical of the attack on January 6, they used a process argument about constitutionality in order to evade confronting Trump on his actual actions.

Effectively, because Trump is no longer in office, Republicans say the Senate doesnt have jurisdiction to convict him of the article of impeachment. As Voxs Ian Millhiser explained, theres some debate over that, but most legal scholars maintain that it is constitutional for the Senate to try a former president.

If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge, McConnell said. McConnell, however, played an integral role in delaying the start of the trial until after Trump was no longer president.

His statement on Saturday was simply a continuation of how Republicans had previously approached Trumps presidency: Theres been an overwhelming hesitation to hold him accountable while he was in office, and that still appears to be the case for many lawmakers.

Republicans Vote Against Honoring Capitol Police For Protecting Congress

House voted 413-12 to award congressional gold medals to all members of Capitol force for their efforts on 6 January

A dozen Republicans voted against a resolution honoring US Capitol police for their efforts to protect members of Congress during the insurrection on 6 January.

The House voted 413-12 on Wednesday to award congressional gold medals, Congresss highest expression of national appreciation, to all members of the Capitol police force.

The Republicans who opposed this honor included Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. They and other opposing members said they had problems with the text of the legislation.

Massie told reporters he disagreed with the terms insurrection and temple in the legislation.

The resolution said: On January 6, 2021, a mob of insurrectionists forced its way into the US Capitol building and congressional office buildings and engaged in acts of vandalism, looting, and violently attacked Capitol police officers.

It also named the three officers who responded to the attack and died shortly after Capitol police officers Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood and Metropolitan police department officer Jeffrey Smith and said seven other people died and more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured.

Louie Gohmert, a congressman from Texas, said in a statement that the text does not honor anyone, but rather seeks to drive a narrative that isnt substantiated by known facts.

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These 12 Republicans Defied Trump And Voted To Overturn His Declaration Of An Emergency At The Border

Twelve Republican senators defied President Trump on Thursday, rebuffing his public and private pleas for GOP unity and voting for a resolution overturning his declaration of a national emergency at the border.

The vote marked congressional Republicans first significant defection from Trump in more than two years. Throughout his presidency, he has enjoyed almost universal support from his party save for a few GOP lawmakers who bucked him in big moments like the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and some foreign policy issues.

But this was a rejection of Trump on his signature campaign promise. Since the day he announced his candidacy for president, Trump spoke about ending illegal immigration and building a wall along the southern border that he originally said would be paid for by Mexico. It is the defining issue among his core supporters. Build the wall is a Trump rallying cry.

The Senate Republicans who voted to block Trumps ability to unilaterally circumvent Congress and shift money to build his wall were swift to point out they still supported the wall, but they were voting to preserve the constitutional separation of powers.

To make clear, a border fence, a border barrier is a policy that I support, wholeheartedly, unequivocally, said Sen. Mike Lee on the Senate floor, in announcing his support for the resolution.

Will The Stimulus Bill Boost Democrats Electoral Prospects

But is this opposition real or just noise? After all, were still a long way from the 2022 primaries, which leaves plenty of time for anger surrounding their votes to impeach Trump to fade.

related:Sometimes Senators Just Retire. Dont Read Too Much Into The Recent GOP Exodus. Read more. »

At first glance, the seriousness of the primary challengers does vary quite a bit, ranging from the very serious that is, other elected officials, who tend to be stronger candidates to political newcomers like a conservative activist best known for getting married in a MAGA dress. Yet, in most cases, these representatives should all have at least some reason to be concerned about winning renomination in 2022 especially those who hail from more Republican-leaning districts.1

Republicans who voted to impeach face primary challenges

The 10 House Republicans who backed impeachment, including whether they were publicly admonished by state or local Republican Party committees and whether they have a primary challenger

Representative -10.9

*Valadao lost reelection in Californias 21st Congressional District in 2018 but won the seat back in 2020.

Admonishment includes a censure or public rebuke by a Republican Party committee at the state, district or county level.

related:Why Republicans Dont Fear An Electoral Backlash For Opposing Really Popular Parts Of Bidens Agenda Read more. »

related:Confidence Interval: Republicans Will Win Back Congress In 2022 Read more. »

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List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2020 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who opposed the re-election of incumbent Donald Trump, the 2020 Republican Party nominee for President of the United States. Among them are former Republicans who left the party in 2016 or later due to their opposition to Trump, those who held office as a Republican, Republicans who endorsed a different candidate, and Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the presumptive nominee. Over 70 former senior Republican national security officials and 61 additional senior officials have also signed onto a statement declaring, “We are profoundly concerned about our nation’s security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

A group of former senior U.S. government officials and conservativesincluding from the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Trump administrations have formed The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform to, “focus on a return to principles-based governing in the post-Trump era.”

A third group of Republicans, Republican Voters Against Trump was launched in May 2020 has collected over 500 testimonials opposing Donald Trump.

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Which 12 Republicans Voted Against Trump

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Which 12 Republicans Voted Against Trump

Sen Susan Collins Of Maine

12 Republicans Vote With Democrats In Terminating Trumps National Emergency | Hardball | MSNBC

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

Watch: Sen Susan Collins Explains Just Why 12 Republicans Voted Against Trumps Emergency Declaration

On Thursday, prior to the Senates 59-41 vote against President Trumps emergency declaration for border wall funding, Sen. Susan Collins detailed the reasoning behind her vote :

Collins continued, noting that Trumps National Emergencies Act fails to fulfill a common sense test used by a former president:

Collins also expressed concern that the declaration would take funding from critical military construction projects, although none have been named as of publication.

The senator from Kentucky also offered his own solution for funding border security: the Border Enforcement, Security, And Funding Enhancement Act.

President Trump vetoed the block on Friday.

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‘a Win Is A Win’: Trump’s Defense Team Makes Remarks After Senate Votes To Acquit

Despite the acquittal, President Joe Biden said in a statement that “substance of the charge” against Trump is “not in dispute.”

Sen Lamar Alexander Of Tennessee

The three-term senator, a member of the Appropriations Committee, announced last December that he would not run for re-election in 2020.

Also Check: How Do Republicans Feel About Climate Change

The 17 Republicans Who Voted To Advance The Senate Infrastructure Bill

At least 10 Republicans were needed to advance the bill. In the end, Democrats were able to net 17 GOP votes:

Sen Marco Rubio Of Florida

Rubio won re-election by 8 points in 2016 after an unsuccessful run for the GOP nomination for president. Trump carried Florida by just;1 point that year.

Read Also: How Many Democratic Presidents Have Republicans Tried To Impeach

Sen Rand Paul Of Kentucky

House Republicans Join Democrats In Voting To Impeach Trump

2 Times In 2 Days Republicans Vote Against President Donald Trump | The Last Word | MSNBC

The final vote was 232 to 197, as the 10 Republicans joined all 222 Democrats in voting in favor of the impeachment resolution.;

Here are the Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump:

Liz Cheney of Wyoming

Tom Rice of South Carolina

Fred Upton of Michigan

David Valadao of California

Also Check: Who Said We Are All Republicans We Are All Federalists

Sen Jerry Moran Of Kansas

Republicans Oppose Awarding Medals For Capitol Defence

Medals will still be awarded, though Republican no votes draw criticism from across political aisle.

They attempted to stop a joint session of Congress from certifying President Joe Bidens electoral victory. Five died after the riot, including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick.

I wouldnt call it an insurrection, Greene told reporters after the vote.

Greene joined Representative Thomas Massie in saying the Capitol is not a temple.

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Republicans Who Voted To Acquit Trump Used Questions Of Constitutionality As A Cover

Following the vote, McConnell gave a scathing speech condemning Trumps lies about election fraud as well as his actions on January 6, only moments after he supported acquittal.

Republicans Vote Against Honoring Capitol Police For Protecting Congress