Donald Trump in early September directed federal officials to find ways to cut funding to cities controlled by Democrats, citing violence amid protests against systemic racism in policing. The move threatens billions of dollars for many of the country’s largest urban hubs as the president makes the unrest a centerpiece of his re-election campaign, the New York Times reported (9/2).
Barr put at least three cities on the chopping block: New York, Seattle, and Portland—all liberal-leaning cities run by Democrats in Democrat-controlled states, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (9/21).
“The US Department of Justice today identified the following three jurisdictions that have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities: New York City; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington,” claimed a Justice Department press release (9/21).
Barr also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, the New York Times reported, though a department spokesman said Barr did not direct the civil rights division to explore this idea.
The directives are in keeping with Barr’s approach to prosecute crimes as aggressively as possible in cities where protests have given way to violence. But in suggesting possible prosecution of Mayor Durkan, a Democrat, Barr also took aim at an elected official whom Trump has repeatedly attacked.
Barr accused state and local leaders of endangering “innocent citizens” by impeding their own law enforcement officials and agencies from doing their jobs.
Barr has already presided over deploying unmarked federal militia to cities led by Democrats to abduct people off the streets, bundle them off in unmarked vehicles, and detain them for questioning without cause—which is illegal.
Trump laid out the directive in a memo, released Sept. 2, to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Barr. It accuses state and local officials of abdicating their duties.
“Anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities,” Trump wrote in the memo, mentioning a few cities specifically: Portland, Ore.; Washington; Seattle; and the president’s birth city, New York. “My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”
With polls showing him trailing Biden, Trump has tried to shift the public’s attention away from his administration’s failed response to the coronavirus pandemic and to what he depicts as out-of-control crime in New York and other cities. He has seized on an uptick in crime and has tried to blame it on local Democratic leaders.
“The power to execute and enforce the law is an executive function altogether,” Barr said in a speech at Hillsdale College (9/16). “That means discretion is invested in the executive to determine when to exercise the prosecutorial power.”
DEMOCRATS HAVE A CLEAR SHOT AT SENATE MAJORITY. Democrats have a good shot at picking up three or four seats to regain the Senate majority, David Jarman noted at DailyKos (9/21). Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 lead in the Senate, so Democrats need a net gain of at least three seats in November, if there is a Democratic vice president to break ties. Of course, a net gain of four or more seats would insulate not only against a Republican vice president, but also give Democrats a Joe Manchin-proof majority, “which could make all the difference between a Senate that merely does no harm versus one that can pass progressive legislation — or even, say, have the votes to eliminate the filibuster in order to even contemplate passing such legislation in the first place. Of course, then, you might start thinking about also needing a five-seat gain to create a Kyrsten Sinema-proof majority, a six-seat gain to create a Tom Carper-proof majority, and so on, but let’s not go wild just yet.”
The top Democratic pickup opportunities are in Arizona, Colorado and Maine, where Democratic candidates have led consistently for months. However, Republicans likely will pick up a seat in Alabama, where Doug Jones (D) won a special election in 2017 against a bizarrely flawed Republican opponent, Roy Moore — and polls currently show that the widely expected outcome is indeed likely to happen.
That makes a fourth pickup necessary. Luckily, the Democratic candidate in North Carolina, Cal Cunningham, is also routinely leading in the polls over Sen. Thom Tillis. In fact, it wouldn’t be outlandish to think that North Carolina is a better bet than Maine, if you’d prefer; while the polling average in Maine has Sara Gideon (D) with a showier lead over Sen. Susan Collins (R), the lead in North Carolina has been very stable and is based on many, many more polls. The Maine number, in fact, is heavily driven by last week’s Quinnipiac poll, which is the only poll this race has seen with a double-digit lead for Gideon.
On top of that, there are near ties in Alaska, Kansas, South Carolina and Georgia’s regularly scheduled race, along with races within arm’s reach in Iowa, Montana and Texas. Compounding the Republicans’ problems, there is only one other competitive race where they’re on the offense (but still losing), in Michigan.
Two races look closer than they actually may be are in Mississippi, where former congressman Mike Espy (D) is about 5 points behind in a rematch with Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R), who beat Espy by 8 points in a 2018 special election. But Jarman noted, “Mississippi has the highest African-American percentage of any state, it’s actually not unusual for a Democratic candidate to hit the low-to-mid-40s here, despite Mississippi’s usual dark-red status. However, that’s because of its heavily racially-polarized voting, so, in an ‘inelastic’ state with few swing voters, the final ascent to the 50% mark is brutally difficult.”
Kentucky is high on many Democrats’ wish lists, and Democratic candidate Amy McGrath is raising money at an astonishing clip, Jarman noted. “The unfortunate reality, though, is that McGrath is nevertheless trailing Mitch McConnell by double digits, in another state where it’s not hard for a Democrat to break 40 (thanks more to a lot of white ‘ancestral Democrats,’ rather than a large African-American base) but getting to 50 in a federal race is a Herculean feat. (As a caveat, Kentucky did elect a Democratic governor last year — the son of a popular ex-Governor, against a terrible incumbent, who won by only a fraction of a point.) Think of McGrath’s job more as to raise a ton of money and keep McConnell pinned down and unable to help in closer races.”
Another potential race is the special election in Georgia, where appointed incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) faces voters for the first time against candidates from both parties, in what amounts to a primary election, with a runoff in January. But the top two slots in the polling average are both Republicans: Loeffler at 24 and Doug Collins at 20. The top Democrat, Raphael Warnock, is only narrowly behind at 17 and there are still many undecided voters, so it’s quite possible he (or another Democrat) breaks into the top two. But, really, we won’t know until after Election Day whether this is even a potential pickup or not.
POSTMASTER GENERAL HAS ROUGH DAY IN COURT, IN MULTIPLE WINS FOR DEMOCRACY. Federal and state courts are acting quickly to protect November’s election and ensure that the US Postal Service does its job of delivering election materials on time and without putting its thumb on the scale for Donald Trump, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (9/18). The key decisions (9/17) included a direct confrontation from secretaries of state to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, in which the embattled official apologized for acting without consulting them and sending out election information that was incorrect. A decision in a federal court in Washington State and a Pennsylvania court rounded out a jam-packed Thursday in Postal Service news.
The major development was an injunction handed down by US District Judge Stanley Bastian in Washington State to halt the operational changes he’s imposed on the USPS. From the bench, Bastian said that DeJoy and Trump are “involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service,” and said, “this attack on the Postal Service is likely to irreparably harm the states’ ability to administer the 2020 general election.” In the 13-page preliminary injunction that followed, Bastian wrote “at the heart of DeJoy’s and the Postal Service’s actions is voter disenfranchisement,” citing Trump’s statements about withholding funds and “the actual impact of the changes on primary elections that resulted in uncounted ballots.” He continued that it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to conclude that the changes were “an intentional effort on the part of the current administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state and federal elections.”
The judge ordered that the changes DeJoy has made be halted, including his “trucks leave on time” policy that has accounted for most of the chaos in the agency and the delivery delays. Bastian called these changes a “Leave Mail Behind” policy and ordered them to stop. “Plaintiffs have made an extensive showing of irreparable harm that is caused and will be caused by the Postal Service’s ‘Leave Mail Behind’ policy and the Postal Service’s refusal to ensure that election mail will be treated as First Class mail to ensure timely delivery,” he wrote. He also halted the removal of sorting machines, a practice DeJoy told Congress in August that he was going to suspend—a promise Bastian found lacking. He noted that 72% of the machines were removed from facilities in counties that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “DeJoy’s actions fly in the face of Congress’s intent to insulate the management of the Postal Service from partisan politics and political influence and acknowledgement that free and fair elections depend on a reliable mail service,” Bastian wrote.
He enjoined the USPS from implementing or enforcing any “change in the nature of postal services which will generally affect service on a nationwide or substantially nationwide basis” without first obtaining an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission. Any request to “reconnect or replace any decommissioned or removed sorting machine(s)” must be directed through the court for approval, Bastian ordered, unless the USPS has already approved it.
The Postal Service responded via spokesman Dave Partenheimer that “while we are exploring our legal options, there should be no doubt that the Postal Service is ready and committed to handle whatever volume of election mail it receives. Our number one priority is to deliver election mail on-time.”
In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court issued rulings to secure that state’s vote-by-mail and make it easier to access for the state’s voters. The court extended the deadline for the return of ballots, allowed ballot drop boxes, and took the Green Party’s candidate off the presidential race on the ballot. The Trump campaign had sued the state to prevent the expansion of mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes.
While all that was happening, DeJoy was privately groveling in a Zoom conference with secretaries of state over the nationwide postcard mailing he had sent out about mail-in ballots that gave erroneous information for many states. He failed to consult with the various states about their requirements and deadlines, causing confusion for many voters, which led to accusations that he and his team were deliberately undermining the process by providing misinformation. DeJoy apologized, according to participants on the call. He said the postcards were an effort “to encourage voters to inform themselves on how to vote by mail effectively,” but conceded that he had failed to “give you a heads-up to see the mailer in advance.” He promised: “We will do better next time.“
DeJoy told the participants that he disagreed with Trump’s attacks on the USPS and its ability to deliver mail ballots, as well Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that postal workers could be bribed to commit election fraud. He apparently fell all over himself to assure the state officials that he would work with them in the future to ensure the accuracy of mailings. “There seems to be, coming from DeJoy, the confirmation they are going to do everything they can to ensure the delivery and timeliness of all mailed ballots—that standards are going to be followed so that all of that happens—and in the future they will try to run things by election officials before public information is placed out,” Washington, D.C. Board of Elections Executive Director Alice Miller told the Washington Post.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who had pressed DeJoy on the call on his “specific plan to address the misinformation coming from the administration” about voting by mail, remained cautiously skeptical. She said it was “very noteworthy that he says he’s publicly in disagreement with the president,” but she isn’t convinced. “I also think actions speak louder than words.“
FEDERAL GOV’T DIDN’T TRY TO STOP COVID-19. In July, Vanity Fair reporter Katherine Eban reported that a national COVID-19 testing strategy had been ready to go in April, but rather than rolling that plan out to the public, it was scrapped because Donald Trump believed the disease would mostly kill people in blue (Democratic) states. Now Eban has followed up with a look at how Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, developed that plan along with his college roommate and real estate buddies, along with how he ran many other aspects of the COVID-19 response.
The answer is he didn’t, Mark Sumner noted at DailyKos (9/18). Because Kushner and Trump’s twisted view was that it “wasn’t government’s job” to step in for a nation in crisis. The shortages, the scrambling over supplies at an ever higher price, the nurses who were forced to wear garbage bags and the patients who were turned away by overtaxed hospitals … that was the plan. Infection and death didn’t happen by accident, and it didn’t happen because Trump and Kushner weren’t warned against the consequences of inaction. Suffering was by design.
No matter how many times Trump and his supporters claim “there was no playbook” for the COVID-19 pandemic, there absolutely was. Plans for a government response to this type of pandemic had been written, revised, war gamed, and practiced for decades. It wasn’t the lack of a plan that caused disaster. It was refusal to follow the plan.
Instead, Trump and Kushner decided to do what they had done on many other occasions—ignore the experts.
Trump turned the daily COVID-19 briefings into a replacement for his much-missed rallies, while Kushner surrounded himself with a collection of flatterers whose main task seems to have been not only telling him that he was “brilliant” and preventing any effective response. Instead, Kushner blundered between actions based on business connections and personal favors as his inexperienced team nodded along.
That, incredibly enough, resulted in a system where medical supplies were directed to Russia, even as states were still begging. It also resulted in an attempt to obtain a vaccine with a $1 billion bribe—a deal that was collapsed as soon as it leaked.
As Eban recounts, even as the outbreak in the US was racking up thousands of cases a day, and the death toll was mounting, a bipartisan group of both government and business leaders found Kushner utterly unwilling to take action. Not because action wasn’t possible. But because he instead preferred to lecture them on the proper role of government … which didn’t include helping people in an emergency.
In one memorable meeting, Kushner sat enthroned in an oversized chair in a hotel ballroom, surrounded by a team made up of investment bankers and Wall Street acquaintances, and listened as business and government leaders attempted to explain the dire situation. Extreme shortages of basic protective gear and ventilators were leading states to compete against each other in a chaotic market where supplies weren’t getting to those with the greatest need. Thousands of individual hospitals had no single place to report their requirements. Businesses were looking for coordination on how to manage sales. Major had corporations offered to help with manufacturing, but needed direction.
Political leaders appealed to Kushner to have Trump invoke the Defense Production Act, centralize the purchase and distribution of PPE, and turn the government’s power loose on fighting the pandemic. What actually happened shocked everyone. “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” declared Kushner. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do.” Told that central leadership was required, Kushner dismissed the idea. “Free markets will solve this,” he said. “That is not the role of government.”
And when he was told that thousands of people in New York were dying as Governor Cuomo begged for assistance, Kushner was joyfully dismissive. “Cuomo,” he said, “didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state.” And because the governor hadn’t begged hard enough. “His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”
Both Kushner and Trump have family, homes, businesses, and tenants in New York. They lived there. They ate, slept, raised families, and enjoyed the life of the city for decades. It was their home. And when that city needed their assistance, they didn’t just refuse to help. They told it to go to hell.
In the end, the behind the scenes view of the pandemic response looks all too much like what was already visible: A sporadic, uncoordinated response where political favors trumped public health and talk was far more abundant than assistance. Donald Trump had the chance to be a national hero, and all it required was that he trust science, trust the experts, and execute a plan that was already in his hands. Instead, he handed off to Kushner, who promptly made the COVID-19 response a party for people who had not the slightest idea how to do anything with government but break it.
As one participant at that hotel room meeting made clear, at the time it was easy to believe Kushner was just an misguided ideologue who was killing people because he couldn’t see past his own stubborn views. In retrospect, it seems a lot more like making people suffer and die was the idea from the outset.
TRUMP APPLAUDS FED TASK FORCE KILLING PORTLAND KILLING SUSPECT. When members of a federal task force surrounded Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-described anti-fascist suspected of fatally shooting a member of a far-right group in Portland, Ore., the wanted man wasn’t obviously armed, a witness to the scene said Sept. 9.
According to Nate Dinguss, Reinoehl was clutching a cellphone and eating a gummy worm as he walked to his car outside an apartment complex in Lacey, Wash. Officers opened fire without announcing themselves or trying to arrest him, Dinguss, a 39-year-old who lives in the apartment complex, said in a statement shared with the Washington Post.
Donald Trump has praised 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two protesters and wounded a third at a Kenosha, Wis., protest (8/25), but Trump told Fox “News” host Jeanine Pirro Reinoehl was “a cold-blooded” killer, despite Reinoehl’s claim he fired in self-defense. "This guy was a violent criminal, and the US Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something -- that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution,” said Trump, who is never much bothered by facts in criminal cases.
Dinguss’s account of the fatal shooting of Reinoehl, first reported by the Oregonian, contradicts details offered by federal authorities, who said Reinoehl, 48, pulled a gun as members of a fugitive task force tried to arrest him (9/3). Two other witnesses also told the Olympian they had seen Reinoehl fire a weapon at police.
Dinguss, whose attorney described him as an ordained minister, said he fears reprisals from far-right groups and police for describing what he saw unfolding outside his apartment.
“We are very concerned for our client’s safety for speaking out, both from the fascist right, and retaliation by law enforcement,” said Luke Laughlin, his attorney, in a statement to the Washington Post <https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/10/reinoehl-portland-antifa-killing-police/>(9/10).
Prosecutors charged Reinoehl with fatally shooting Aaron J. Danielson, 39, on Aug. 29 after right-wing supporters of President Trump clashed with counterprotesters in downtown Portland. In an interview Vice News aired (9/3), Reinoehl said the shooting was self-defense and said he believed Danielson, a member of the far-right Patriot Prayer group, was threatening him and a friend.
As national politicians, including Trump, demanded Reinoehl be swiftly arrested, officers in the Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force tracked him to Lacey, about 120 miles north of Portland.
There are few official details about what happened next. At least four members of the task force, which included officers from a variety of local agencies, fired dozens of times at Reinoehl; the US Marshals Service later said he had a handgun, but it wasn’t clear whether he had ever fired it at police. The Thurston County, Wash., Sheriff’s Office, which is leading the investigation, said that Reinoehl was in possession of a semi-automatic handgun, but that investigators were still trying to determine if he had fired it or pulled it out.
Dinguss said he never saw Reinoehl pull out a gun.
He said he watched as two unmarked police vehicles converged on Reinoehl as he walked to his car, holding his phone and chewing on a piece of candy. The officers never audibly identified themselves and didn’t try to arrest Reinoehl, Dinguss said.
Instead, he said they immediately began firing. When Reinoehl heard the gunfire, he ducked behind his car, which was pinned in by the law enforcement vehicles; he never tried to get inside, Dinguss said, and he never saw him reaching for a weapon. Dinguss said he watched police unleash rapid-fire rounds at Reinoehl, once pausing to shout “Stop!” before resuming their fire.
Dinguss added officers waited “multiple minutes” before rendering medical aid to Reinoehl, who died at the scene from several gunshot wounds.
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2020
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