On the heels of announcing articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Democrats had come to an agreement with Trump on the new North American trade pact, inexplicably giving Trump what pundits keep calling a major policy gift on the very same day as they solemnly announced that Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
The AFL-CIO has endorsed the trade agreement, and, in announcing the deal, Democrats say that it is dramatically improved over what Trump had presented. Announcing that the deal was going to be finalized Dec. 10, Pelosi told the Wall Street Journal CEO Council forum on Dec. 9, “There are those who I read about in one place or another that say, why would you give President Trump a victory? … Well, why wouldn’t we? This is the right thing to do for our trade situation, for our workers.” Asked the same thing at her press conference Dec. 10, Pelosi reiterated, “We came a long way from what he originally proposed ... we’re declaring victory for the American worker.”
That labor has agreed to it is good. That it does help American farmers is good. That she’s literally stepping on top of the very critical and grave impeachment announcement with this, within an hour of revealing the articles, is baffling. Yes, it does belie the Republican trope that Democrats can’t both govern and do impeachment at the same time. But it’s not like Pelosi’s getting any credit for it from Republicans.
The first thing Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said about it the morning of Dec. 10 was, “From their point of view, the timing is quite important, in that here’s this devastating report about the FBI ... convenient to have some news [in the USMCA] to distract people.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was no less generous, saying, “I hope that now that we’re here that both chambers will be able to set aside Democrats’ impeachment parade long enough to get the peoples’ business finally finished.”
The deal is done. US trade representative Robert Lighthizer and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner have gone to Mexico City for a signing ceremony, and Politico reports that the vote will happen on Dec. 19, the day after the impeachment vote is likely to be held. According to Politico, Pelosi has “said she doesn’t want impeachment to be the last thing members vote on before the holiday recess.”
Full details of the agreement were not available, but it will maintain tariff-free trade among the US, Mexico and Canada. It includes stricter rules than NAFTA for the preferential treatment among the countries for duties on automobiles, and, reported Politico, “includes modernized digital trade rules and stronger labor and environmental standards” than NAFTA. (Joan McCarter, Daily Kos)
ONE-THIRD OF AMERICANS DELAYED MEDICAL CARE OVER COST LAST YEAR. One-in-four Americans admits they or a member of their family this past year has delayed medical treatment of a serious illness due to costs, according to a new Gallup survey (10/9).
The number is the highest ever recorded by Gallup on the question, Eoin Higgins wrote for CommonDreams.
“Another 8% said they or a family member put off treatment for a less serious condition, bringing the total percentage of households delaying care due to costs to 33%, tying the high from 2014,” the report said.
Delayed care can have serious ramifications on health, well being—and even the economy, the report noted.
And it could be a political issue lurking in the background of the 2020 general election:
The sharp increase in the past year, particularly among Democrats, suggests that healthcare costs could be a more potent political issue than previously seen. Presidential candidates who acknowledge the problem and propose solutions to address it may find a receptive ear among voters.
The report highlights dire condition of the US healthcare system at a time when Democratic candidates for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination are debating whether or not to push for Medicare for All, the policy advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden have resisted a universal system—a position that The District Sentinel’s Sam Knight noted on Twitter in response to the new Gallup data.
“This is the ‘choice based’ system Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg want to preserve,” said Knight.
HOUSE SENDS BILL TO RESTORE VOTING RIGHTS ACT TO ROADBLOCKED SENATE. The House of Representatives voted {12/6] to restore key protections for voters across the country after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. But the new Voting Rights Advancement bill has little chance of becoming law given opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate and by President Trump, whose aides threatened a veto if the bill gets out of Congress.
The Republican-dominated Supreme Court in the Shelby County v. Holder decision disabled the enforcement mechanism, which requires certain jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting laws from implementing changes affecting voting without receiving preapproval from the Department of Justice or federal court that the change does not discriminate against protected minorities. The court ruled that the formula used to determine which states and local governments are subject to preclearance because they were last updated in 1975.
` After the Shelby decision, states freed from preclearance passed a wave of voter suppression laws, including strict voter ID laws, aggressive voter purges, and cutbacks to early voting in states such as Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, Ari Berman noted at MotherJones.com (12/6). In one striking example, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights found that 1,688 polling places were closed between 2012 and 2018 in states that previously needed federal approval of their election changes under the Voting Rights Act.
The new bill would initially cover 11 states: nine in the South, plus California and New York, which have more recently been found to discriminate against Latinos and Asian Americans. The bill would also require all states to get federal approval for election changes that are known to disproportionately affect voters of color, such as strict voter ID laws, tighter voter registration requirements, and polling place closures in areas with large numbers of minority voters.
The House Judiciary Committee and the House Administration Committee held extensive hearings in eight states, including Georgia and Texas, as well as Washington to document the need for a renewed Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Advancement Act (HR 4), sponsored by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL), passed the House on a largely party-line vote, 228 to 187. Unlike in 2006, when the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act passed the House by a vote of 390-33, only one House Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), voted for the new bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already declared his opposition. (McConnell also called a sweeping democracy reform bill passed by House Democrats in March a “power grab” by Democrats.)
“Although the VRAA has no chance of becoming law this year,” Berman noted, “the passage of the bill lays the groundwork for Democrats to make voting rights a major legislative priority should they recapture the Senate and the White House in 2020.”
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff noted that 112 House Republicans voted in favor of the original Voting Rights Bill in 1965 and 192 Republicans voted for its reauthorization in 2006 but only one Republican voted for the current bill to restore it.
“Why? The GOP’s hopes depend on fewer people voting,” Schiff said.
N.C. REP. GEORGE HOLDING TO RETIRE AFTER DISTRICT REDRAWN. When N.C. state Sen. David Lewis was asked why he drew Congressional maps that generated a 10-3 Republican Congressional delegation in an evenly divided state, he answered: “Because I couldn’t get an 11-2 map.”
The North Carolina Supreme Court said the gerrymandering went too far, and ordered a new map that will still favor Republicans in eight out of the state’s 13 congressional seats, but US Rep. George Holding (R-NC) said he won’t seek re-election in a new district that will be heavily Democratic. He is the 21st House Republican to announce retirement in this cycle, Rashaan Ayesh reported at Axios (10/6).
“Jim Crowers cannot win unless they cheat, whether it is voter suppression, inviting and empowering Russian interference, or gerrymandering. Steve Levitsky aptly calls this “competitive authoritarianism,” and it is the guiding principle of the GOP, Jonathan Zasloff, a professor at the UCLA School of Law who spent a few weeks in North Carolina this past summer helping citizens get photo ID cards they need to register to vote, wrote in a FaceBook post (10/6)..
“Fortunately enough, North Carolina voters put in a state Supreme Court that wouldn’t have it, and forced redistricting. The new districts still aren’t fair — the current map favors an 8-5 split — but they aren’t as egregious as before. And Tar Heel State Jim Crowers see the writing on the wall: here is the most recent bigoted plutocrat to suddenly want to spend more time with his family,” Zasloff wrote.
HOUSE DEMS: TRUMP ADMiNISTRATION ‘ILLEGALLY WITHHOLDING’ FUNDING FOR PUERTO RICO HURRICANE AID. Democratic lawmakers (10/5) accused the Trump administration of “illegally withholding” funding for hurricane recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after missing a legally required deadline to kick off the process three months ago. The chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-TX), said at a press conference, “they knew their actions were illegal and yet they did it anyways,” referring to top officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including Secretary Ben Carson, NBC News reported.
The missed deadline would have jump-started the process to help the island get billions in federal housing funds that Congress appropriated 664 days ago after Hurricane Maria devastated the US territory in 2017.
Castro joined other House Democrats including the chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. David Price (D-NC), who accused HUD of “illegally withholding” the funding for recovery efforts including rebuilding tens of thousands of homes with damaged roofs, many of which are still covered with blue tarps.
Congress had mandated the housing agency to issue funding notices to 18 disaster-stricken states and territories no later than Sept. 4. They published all the notices except Puerto Rico’s. The publication of the notice would have allowed island officials to start drafting a plan that would create the structures needed to manage $10.2 billion in much-needed recovery funds.
TRUMP BRINGS TWO SOLDIERS PARDONED FOR WAR CRIMES TO FLORIDA FUNDRAISER. President Trump brought two soldiers he pardoned for war crimes to be his guests at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida (10/7), the Miami Herald reported.
No press were allowed into the Statesman’s Dinner, which was held at the JW Marriott Turnberry Resort and Spa in Aventura. The 1,000 attendees were required to check their cell phones into individual locked cases before they entered the unmarked ballroom at the south end of the resort.
But the secrecy was key to Trump’s performance, which attendees called “hilarious.”
In an hourlong speech, Trump did impressions of Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and joked about the slim physique of Ohio congressman — and former wrestler — Jim Jordan, who was in attendance. Trump introduced his son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, and North Florida Congressman Mike Waltz.
Trump also brought to the stage Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who Trump pardoned in November for their involvement in separate war crimes. Lorance was serving a 19-year sentence for ordering his soldiers shoot at unarmed men in Afghanistan, and Golsteyn was to stand trial for the 2010 extrajudicial killing of a suspected bomb maker.
REFUGEE ADVOCATES REMEMBER ANNIVERSARY OF CHILD’S DEATH IN US CUSTODY. Sunday (12/8) marked the one-year anniversary of the death of 7-year-old Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin while in Customs and Border Protection custody. Her short life ending horrifically while under US watch. It was the first death of a child in federal immigration custody for a decade. Leaders remembered the girl and pledged to continue fighting for accountability, Gabe Ortiz noted at Daily Kos (10/9).
“A year ago today, a 7-year-old named Jakelin died in US government custody, a direct result of our cruel border policies,” tweeted 2020 presidential candidate and former HUD Secretary Julián Castro. “We must work towards building an immigration system where no one dies seeking safety and a better life.”
But inhumane holding facilities and government-sanctioned negligence have continued to steal young lives, because at least seven children have died after being taken into custody since 2018, Ortiz noted. Recently released surveillance footage revealed that one of these children, 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, languished alone and died next to his cell’s toilet. His body was found by another detained teen, contradicting a claim from border officials that it was an agent who had found the Maya Achi boy.
While investigations remain ongoing, this revelation adds to the frustration of advocates waiting for accountability. “Jakelin’s death resulted from the cruel and inhumane policies applied daily along our southern border and a culture that often treats people—and frequently people of color—as disposable, unworthy of adequate care and attention,” said Tom Jawetz of the Center for American Progress. “Although Jakelin was the first child to die in CBP custody in more than a decade, additional children have died in the year since, often of fatal neglect to entirely preventable diseases. This is cruel and illegal.”
MOSCOW MITCH’S BOYCOTT OF LEGISLATING IS ANGERING ONE OF HIS OWN: CHUCK GRASSLEY. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s boycott of legislating on behalf of American people is getting some pushback from powerful fellow Republican Chuck Grassley, who wants the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Ac to get a Senate hearing. The bill would give Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices, and Grassley (D-IA) worked on it with his committee’s ranking member, Ron Wyden (D-OR). “Eventually, McConnell’s going to realize that this is very important for Republicans maintaining control of the Senate,” Grassley told reporters last week, Joan McCarter wrote at Daily Kos..
Grassley also says he has Trump on his side, and Trump will help him line up Republicans. We’ll see.
LAWSUIT ALLEGING PRIVATE PRISON COMPANY USED ICE DETAINEES AS ‘CAPTIVE LABOR FORCE’ GOES FORWARD. A federal judge has said a lawsuit alleging that a private prison company has for years used detained immigrants as “a readily available, captive labor force” may go forward as a national class action, Mother Jones reports (10/5). Asylum-seeker Abdiaziz Karim and three co-plaintiffs say that GEO Group forced detainees in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to perform “a wide range of completely uncompensated work” that went far beyond bed-making and tidying—and those who protested were disciplined with punishment that included pepper spray and solitary confinement, which they say is torture.
“The detainees argue that GEO is violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which prohibits forced labor,” Madison Pauly writes at Mother Jones. “If the detainees can convince a judge or jury that GEO’s sanitation policies have broken the law, they hope the company will be ordered to start paying detainees for their labor.”
The Trump administration in 2017 reversed an Obama administration move cutting back the use of private prisons. “In fiscal year 2019, [GEO] received ICE contract revenue exceeding $320 million—about double the maximum it received during the Obama administration in 2015,” The Daily Beast reported in November.
Still, detainees at the notorious Adelanto Detention Center prison in California said they were paid as little as $1 a day to work in a “voluntary” work program that wasn’t so voluntary. Reports Mother Jones, “The program is ‘not voluntary in any meaningful sense,’ the detainees argue, because working is the only way to pay for food, water, hygiene products, and other basic necessities they claim GEO withholds under a ‘deprivation policy.’ And they aren’t aren’t always paid for their work.” A surprise inspection uncovered serious—and horrific—violations at the facility last year, including nooses hanging in detainee cells and falsified medical reports.
“ICE has not taken seriously the recurring problem of detainees hanging bedsheet nooses at the Adelanto Center; this deficiency violates ICE standards,” the Department of Homeland Security inspector general said in a report following the surprise visit. “According to the guard escorting us, the nooses are a daily issue and very widespread. When we asked two contract guards who oversaw the housing units why they did not remove the bed sheets, they echoed it was not a high priority.” Not a high priority, despite a man dying by hanging at Adelanto in 2017.
GEO Group isn’t the only private prison profiteer to face similar allegations. Last year, CoreCivic was sued for forcing detainees “to work for as little as $1 a day to clean, cook, and maintain the detention center in a scheme to maximize profits.” Detained people who protested this were also threatened with solitary confinement and even loss of food and calls to loved ones. These companies need to be held accountable. “For the first time, everybody who’s locked up in a GEO immigration prison, and who’s subject to the allegedly illegal policies, now has someone that they can look to as a voice, to bring their own treatment to light,” said attorney Andrew Free, who represents the GEO Group plaintiffs. (Gabe Ortiz at DialyKos)
TRUMP TOUTS ‘SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP’ WITH NORTH KOREA, WHICH CALLS HIM ‘HEEDLESS AND ERRATIC OLD MAN.’ It’s not a mutual admiration society between Donald Trump and one of his favorite autocrats, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Trump has called Kim “a great leader” with whom he has a “very, very good relationship.” Kim apparently disagrees, having his government release a statemen calling Trump a “heedless and erratic old man” (10/9), after Trump tweeted (10/8) that Kim is “too smart” to “void his special relationship” with Trump.
One of Kim’s senior officials, former nuclear negotiator Kim Yong Chol, said that Trump “is such a heedless and erratic old man, the time when we cannot but call him a ‘dotard’ again may come. ... Trump has too many things that he does not know about (North Korea). We have nothing more to lose. Though the US may take away anything more from us, it can never remove the strong sense of self-respect, might and resentment against the US from us.”
Former Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong added that Trump’s comments are a “corroboration that he feels fear” about North Korea’s potential power and warned that he should stop using “abusive language” that could offend Kim. “Trump might be in great jitters but he had better accept the status quo that as he sowed, so he should reap, and think twice if he does not want to see bigger catastrophic consequences.”
Joan McCarter wondered at DailyKos, “Who could have predicted Kim would use Trump to gain stature by being recognized and courted by the world’s greatest superpower, and then turn on him?”
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2020
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