![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdBeen a little overwhelmed the last couple of days.
----- 1 -----
Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring campaigns to report foreign election help
By Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 1:24 PM ET, Tue June 30, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/senate-removes-ban-foreign-election-help/index.html
(CNN)The Senate will incorporate the annual intelligence policy legislation into the National Defense Authorization Act -- but only after stripping language from the intelligence bill that would have required presidential campaigns to report offers of foreign election help.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that Senate Republicans forced the removal of the election reporting provision as a condition to include the intelligence bill on the must-pass defense policy legislation.
Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved an amendment on an 8-7 vote from Warner and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, which added a provision to the Intelligence Authorization Act requiring campaigns to notify federal authorities about offers of foreign election help.
----- 2 -----
Journalists are reexamining their reliance on a longtime source: The police
By Paul Farhi and Elahe Izadi
June 30, 2020 at 8:49 a.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/journalists-are-reexamining-their-reliance-on-a-longtime-source-the-police/2020/06/30/303c929c-b63a-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html
For several weeks early this year, reporter Larry Hobbs struggled to nail down the story he was chasing. Police in his hometown of Brunswick, Ga., had offered few details about the death of a young African American man, shot to death at midday on a quiet residential street — no suspects, no arrests. The name of the deceased didn’t even appear in the initial police narrative about the incident.
Hobbs, a veteran reporter for the Brunswick News, came to a conclusion: “This is starting to stink.”
More than a month later, Hobbs broke the story that would soon make national news of how unarmed Ahmaud Arbery had been chased and attacked by three white men who suspected him of committing burglaries in the area. One was a former police officer who had also worked for the district attorney, raising questions about a conflict of interest for investigators — and perhaps explaining Hobbs’s difficulty in getting the facts of the case.
It is among several high-profile stories that have recently caused newsrooms to reflect upon their relationship with law enforcement — especially reporters’ reliance on official police accounts as they construct breaking news stories about a violent incident or arrest. In several of these cases, cellphone video of the incident offered a dramatic contradiction of the first police accounts.
“The police shoots somebody, and right away the mainstream press reports the police version,” said Mel Reeves, a community activist and editor at the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, which serves an African American readership. “What the police tell you initially is a rumor . . . and a lot of the times it’s not accurate.”
In their initial public statements about George Floyd’s death, for example, Minneapolis police didn’t mention that one of its officers knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes; it noted only that Floyd “appeared to be suffering medical distress.” Louisville police listed Breonna Taylor’s injuries as “none” after shooting her eight times in her home during a March police raid that began with a no-knock warrant. And Buffalo police initially said Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old protester who was shoved to the ground and severely injured by officers, merely “tripped and fell.”
----- 3 -----
Intercepted bank transfers show Russia poured money into Taliban-linked accounts after bounties revealed
By Travis Gettys
June 30, 2020
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/intercepted-bank-transfers-show-russia-poured-money-into-taliban-linked-accounts-after-bounties-revealed/
American officials intercepted data that supported their conclusion that Russia had secretly offered bounties to Taliban forces for killing U.S. and coalition forces.
Three officials familiar with the intelligence told the New York Times that intercepted electronic data showed large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to an account linked to the Taliban.
That evidence supported claims about the bounty program described by detainees during interrogations, and undercut White House denials that the intelligence was too thinly sourced to present to President Donald Trump in his daily briefing.
Investigators also identified numerous Afghans by name who were linked to the suspected Russia operation, officials told the Times, including a man believed to have helped distribute some of the funds and purportedly since fled to Russia.
----- 4 -----
Weijia Jiang
twitter.com/weijia
29 June 2020
https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1277736164817022977
The WH says the President wasn’t briefed because the intelligence wasn’t “verified”, but sources tell twitter.com/CBSNews POTUS often hears assessments given w/ varying levels of confidence. For example, info about terror threats. They add the word “verified” is not typically used in IC:
[QUOTED TWEET]
CBS Evening News
twitter.com/CBSEveningNews
29 June 2020
The WH insists Pres. Trump was not briefed on reports that Russia secretly offered bounties for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan -- because the intelligence was “not verified.”
But CBS News has learned twitter.com/POTUS’ national security aides discussed the matter.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
----- 5 -----
AP sources: White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019
June 29, 2020 at 9:23 pm Updated June 30, 2020 at 3:18 pm
By JAMES LAPORTA
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/ap-sources-white-house-aware-of-russian-bounties-in-2019-2/
Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.
The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues at the time that he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.
The White House didn’t respond to questions about Trump or other officials’ awareness of Russia’s provocations in 2019. The White House has said Trump wasn’t — and still hasn’t been — briefed on the intelligence assessments because they haven’t been fully verified. However, it’s rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of a doubt before it is presented to top officials.
Bolton declined to comment Monday when asked by the AP if he’d briefed Trump about the matter in 2019. On Sunday, he suggested to NBC that Trump was claiming ignorance of Russia’s provocations to justify his administration’s lack of response.
“He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” Bolton said.
----- 6 -----
Manhattan prosecutor pick ducks questions about Barr's job offer
Jay Clayton — the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission — made the remarks in a congressional hearing.
By BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN
06/25/2020 02:03 PM EDT
06/25/2020 03:12 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/jay-clayton-sdny-bill-barr-339888
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr first learned less than two weeks ago that their chosen pick as the next top prosecutor in Manhattan wanted the job, he told Congress on Thursday.
Jay Clayton — currently the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — made the revelation in a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, while fielding questions from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
Late in the evening on Friday, June 19, Barr announced that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, was stepping down, and that Trump would nominate Clayton to replace him. Berman, however, said he had no plans to step down, kicking off a dramatic intra-DOJ stand-off that ended Saturday afternoon.
“When did you first discuss the Southern District job with the president, or the Trump administration, and who did you discuss it with?” Maloney asked. “Attorney General Barr?”
“Look, I’m here as the chairman of the SEC to discuss the work of the SEC,” he replied. “What I can say is that, as I said in my opening statement, I need to go back to New York.”
“I was just asking for a timeline,” Maloney replied. “When did you discuss it? Just give me the approximate date, the timeline.”
“What I want to say is, this is something I’ve been talking about for a while, consulting with people as to whether this would make sense for me to continue in public service,” Clayton continued. “This was first raised to the president and the attorney general last weekend. It was something that I had wanted to do, and they first became aware of it last weekend.”
“Thank you, and did you know that Mr. Berman did not want to leave his job in the Southern District when you agreed to accept the nomination?” she asked. “In other words, did you know he was going to be fired to make room for you, instead, for the job?”
“I’m not going to get into that here,” he replied.
...
“If you are eventually confirmed by the Senate for this job, would you commit to recusing yourself from all of that office’s current investigation into President Trump and his associates?” she asked.
“Here’s what I’m gonna say,” he replied. “That’s a process that’s way down the road. Whatever my current position or any position I take, I commit to doing it independently, without fear or favor, in the pursuit of justice.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not what I was asking,” Maloney shot back, going on to detail why she was pressing him on it.
“I’m asking you a very simple question,” she said. “Will you commit, right here, to recusing yourself from these investigations?”
“That position and that process is something that is separate and doesn’t need my attention. What I will commit to do, what I commit to do in my current job, is to approach the job with independence and to follow all ethical rules.”
Maloney said he still wasn’t answering the question, and said the American people need to know whether or not he will be independent.
“Understood, and I commit to independence,” he replied.
----- 7 -----
The Immigration System Is Set To Come To A Near Halt, And No One Is Paying Attention
"It essentially will shut down the immigration system — sort of the final nail in the coffin."
Hamed Aleaziz BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 30, 2020
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-system-budget-cuts
The US agency that oversees and administers key facets of the immigration system, including the processing of citizenship, green cards, and asylum applications, has taken its first steps to dramatically roll back its capabilities by issuing furlough notices to more than 13,000 employees.
If Congress does not provide US Citizenship and Immigration Services with emergency funding before Aug. 3, the employees, who make up more than 60% of all staffers, will be furloughed for up to three months due to the budget crisis. USCIS is a fee-funded agency that receives most of its money through applications for immigration benefits.
While the reasons for the funding shortage are debated — agency officials cite a massive decline in immigration applications due to the pandemic, while immigrant advocates and experts argue that the Trump administration’s policies have played a part in the budget issues — the impact to the immigration system is not.
“Backlogs will grow longer. People will wait longer to become citizens, get green cards. Asylum will grind to a halt,” said Amanda Baran, a former immigration policy official at the Department of Homeland Security who is now a consultant. The number of furloughed employees, she said, would lead to “devastating consequences for people trying to enter and for those living here.”
"It essentially will shut down the immigration system — sort of the final nail in the coffin,” said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a former agency official. “The anticipated agency furloughs will not only result in the loss of employment for thousands of US workers, it will also bring halt the US immigration system to a grinding halt, negatively impacting families, US businesses, educational institutions, medical facilities, and churches throughout the United States.”
In recent days, USCIS employees have been waiting nervously to receive notices. Some have been spared, while others have not. Of the 2,200 staffers in the division that runs the refugee and asylum work, 1,500 received furlough notices. There’s worry among some that the Trump administration isn’t concerned about immigration and asylum officers being out of work. Overall, the mood within the agency has grown dour as many expect the furloughs to be executed.
----- 8 -----
The Voting Disaster Ahead
Intentional voter suppression and unintentional suppression of the vote will collide in November.
Adam Harris
June 30, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/voter-suppression-novembers-looming-election-crisis/613408/
On June 9, primary day, hundreds of people surrounded Park Tavern, a sprawling brewery and restaurant in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. They queued in six-foot increments, and the line wrapped around the parking lot. Two nearby polling locations were closed, so this was where 16,000 Atlantans were slated to cast their ballots. Across the metro area, more than 80 voting locations had been closed or consolidated over concerns about the coronavirus. What’s worse: The new state-ordered voting machines had stopped working.
Some people waited for more than three hours to vote; others left before casting their ballots. Georgia’s meltdown was not an anomaly. The 2020 primary began with a malfunctioning app in the Iowa caucus, rendering the first-in-the-nation contest moot. One month later, on Super Tuesday, voters met hours-long waits in Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Sacramento. Another month passed, thousands of Americans were dying of the coronavirus, and state officials began canceling primaries. Wisconsin’s state legislature forced its April primary through anyway. Milwaukee voters stood masked in a hailstorm, waiting to vote at one of just five polling places. Any other year would have seen 180 voting locations.
The widespread failures during the primary elections foreshadow a potentially disastrous November election. States such as New York have been racing to make accommodations for voting by mail. But other states are making voting more difficult for residents: Oklahoma is fighting to keep its law requiring that absentee ballots be notarized; Texas will not accept medical vulnerability to the coronavirus as sufficient grounds for absentee voting. Even though greater access to the vote might help a sizable number of Donald Trump’s voters, this opposition to it comes from the top. “Mail ballots, they cheat,” the president has said.
The barriers to ballot access were unacceptable before the pandemic, Leah Aden, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who is actively litigating several voting-rights cases, told me. Black voters, on average, wait 45 percent longer to vote than white voters; Latino voters wait 46 percent longer.* One study, from the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, found that black and Latino voters in Florida were more than two times as likely to have their mail-in ballots rejected as white voters—because of a mix of voter error and how the state processes ballots. To leave that already flawed system unchanged in a pandemic is injurious, Aden said. “The failure to operate in the context that we’re in, which is a pandemic, and proactively use your resources to address the emergence of that: That is also a form of voter suppression.”
----- 9 -----
Daniel Dale
twitter.com/ddale8
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1278382908902903808
"Monday...Trump went after attempts to strip the names of racists from buildings. On Tuesday, a...rule meant to combat racial segregation. By Wednesday, Trump was calling the words 'black lives matter' a 'symbol of hate.'"
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-confederate-race/index.html
----- 10 -----
Alexander Reid Ross
twitter.com/areidross
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1278378169175699457
A couple weeks ago, people were stunned by a violent militia descending on Bethel. Yesterday a similar event took place in Boise, Idaho. An estimated 500 Nazis, neo-Confederates, and Trumpists swarmed a small "defund the police" rally of 50 protestors, drawing the mayor's ire.
[NEXT]
Here's one video source. Note the guy in green has SS lightning bolts and a 1%er patch, the guy with the Henchmen hat has a Nazi-style totenkopf.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO OF FASCISTS]
----- 11 -----
'The president is a danger': Hundreds who served under George W. Bush endorse Biden
The group is the latest of a number of Republican organizations opposing Trump's re-election.
1 July 2020
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/president-danger-hundreds-who-served-under-george-w-bush-set-n1232637
[EDITOR'S NOTE: DO NOT FORGET THAT THESE PEOPLE FACILITATED W. BUSH'S MASSIVE TORTURE REGIME AND ILLEGAL INVASION OF IRAQ. SOME ARE WAR CRIMINALS. THEY MAY BE ALLIES FOR THE MOMENT, BUT THEY ARE NOT FRIENDS.]
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of officials who worked for former Republican President George W. Bush are endorsing Democratic White House hopeful Joe Biden — the latest Republican-led group coming out to oppose the re-election of Donald Trump.
The officials, who include Cabinet secretaries and other senior people in the Bush administration, have formed a political action committee — "43 Alumni for Biden" — to support the former vice president in his Nov. 3 race, three organizers of the group told Reuters, which first reported the story. The group on Wednesday put out a statement announcing its formation.
Bush was the country's 43rd president.
- Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring campaigns to report foreign election help
- [IN ABOUT FUCKING TIME NEWS] Journalists are reexamining their reliance on a longtime source: The police
- Intercepted bank transfers show Russia poured money into Taliban-linked accounts after bounties revealed
- The WH says the President wasn’t briefed because the intelligence wasn’t "verified," but...
- AP sources: White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019
- Manhattan prosecutor pick ducks questions about Barr's job offer
- The Immigration System Is Set To Come To A Near Halt, And No One Is Paying Attention
- The Voting Disaster Ahead
- By Wednesday, Trump was calling the words 'black lives matter' a 'symbol of hate.'
- An estimated 500 Nazis, neo-Confederates, and Trumpists swarmed a small "defund the police" rally of 50 protestors in Boise, Idaho
- 'The president is a danger'
----- 1 -----
Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring campaigns to report foreign election help
By Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 1:24 PM ET, Tue June 30, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/senate-removes-ban-foreign-election-help/index.html
(CNN)The Senate will incorporate the annual intelligence policy legislation into the National Defense Authorization Act -- but only after stripping language from the intelligence bill that would have required presidential campaigns to report offers of foreign election help.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that Senate Republicans forced the removal of the election reporting provision as a condition to include the intelligence bill on the must-pass defense policy legislation.
Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved an amendment on an 8-7 vote from Warner and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, which added a provision to the Intelligence Authorization Act requiring campaigns to notify federal authorities about offers of foreign election help.
----- 2 -----
Journalists are reexamining their reliance on a longtime source: The police
By Paul Farhi and Elahe Izadi
June 30, 2020 at 8:49 a.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/journalists-are-reexamining-their-reliance-on-a-longtime-source-the-police/2020/06/30/303c929c-b63a-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html
For several weeks early this year, reporter Larry Hobbs struggled to nail down the story he was chasing. Police in his hometown of Brunswick, Ga., had offered few details about the death of a young African American man, shot to death at midday on a quiet residential street — no suspects, no arrests. The name of the deceased didn’t even appear in the initial police narrative about the incident.
Hobbs, a veteran reporter for the Brunswick News, came to a conclusion: “This is starting to stink.”
More than a month later, Hobbs broke the story that would soon make national news of how unarmed Ahmaud Arbery had been chased and attacked by three white men who suspected him of committing burglaries in the area. One was a former police officer who had also worked for the district attorney, raising questions about a conflict of interest for investigators — and perhaps explaining Hobbs’s difficulty in getting the facts of the case.
It is among several high-profile stories that have recently caused newsrooms to reflect upon their relationship with law enforcement — especially reporters’ reliance on official police accounts as they construct breaking news stories about a violent incident or arrest. In several of these cases, cellphone video of the incident offered a dramatic contradiction of the first police accounts.
“The police shoots somebody, and right away the mainstream press reports the police version,” said Mel Reeves, a community activist and editor at the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, which serves an African American readership. “What the police tell you initially is a rumor . . . and a lot of the times it’s not accurate.”
In their initial public statements about George Floyd’s death, for example, Minneapolis police didn’t mention that one of its officers knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes; it noted only that Floyd “appeared to be suffering medical distress.” Louisville police listed Breonna Taylor’s injuries as “none” after shooting her eight times in her home during a March police raid that began with a no-knock warrant. And Buffalo police initially said Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old protester who was shoved to the ground and severely injured by officers, merely “tripped and fell.”
----- 3 -----
Intercepted bank transfers show Russia poured money into Taliban-linked accounts after bounties revealed
By Travis Gettys
June 30, 2020
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/intercepted-bank-transfers-show-russia-poured-money-into-taliban-linked-accounts-after-bounties-revealed/
American officials intercepted data that supported their conclusion that Russia had secretly offered bounties to Taliban forces for killing U.S. and coalition forces.
Three officials familiar with the intelligence told the New York Times that intercepted electronic data showed large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to an account linked to the Taliban.
That evidence supported claims about the bounty program described by detainees during interrogations, and undercut White House denials that the intelligence was too thinly sourced to present to President Donald Trump in his daily briefing.
Investigators also identified numerous Afghans by name who were linked to the suspected Russia operation, officials told the Times, including a man believed to have helped distribute some of the funds and purportedly since fled to Russia.
----- 4 -----
Weijia Jiang
twitter.com/weijia
29 June 2020
https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1277736164817022977
The WH says the President wasn’t briefed because the intelligence wasn’t “verified”, but sources tell twitter.com/CBSNews POTUS often hears assessments given w/ varying levels of confidence. For example, info about terror threats. They add the word “verified” is not typically used in IC:
[QUOTED TWEET]
CBS Evening News
twitter.com/CBSEveningNews
29 June 2020
The WH insists Pres. Trump was not briefed on reports that Russia secretly offered bounties for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan -- because the intelligence was “not verified.”
But CBS News has learned twitter.com/POTUS’ national security aides discussed the matter.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
----- 5 -----
AP sources: White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019
June 29, 2020 at 9:23 pm Updated June 30, 2020 at 3:18 pm
By JAMES LAPORTA
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/ap-sources-white-house-aware-of-russian-bounties-in-2019-2/
Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.
The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues at the time that he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.
The White House didn’t respond to questions about Trump or other officials’ awareness of Russia’s provocations in 2019. The White House has said Trump wasn’t — and still hasn’t been — briefed on the intelligence assessments because they haven’t been fully verified. However, it’s rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of a doubt before it is presented to top officials.
Bolton declined to comment Monday when asked by the AP if he’d briefed Trump about the matter in 2019. On Sunday, he suggested to NBC that Trump was claiming ignorance of Russia’s provocations to justify his administration’s lack of response.
“He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” Bolton said.
----- 6 -----
Manhattan prosecutor pick ducks questions about Barr's job offer
Jay Clayton — the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission — made the remarks in a congressional hearing.
By BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN
06/25/2020 02:03 PM EDT
06/25/2020 03:12 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/jay-clayton-sdny-bill-barr-339888
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr first learned less than two weeks ago that their chosen pick as the next top prosecutor in Manhattan wanted the job, he told Congress on Thursday.
Jay Clayton — currently the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — made the revelation in a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, while fielding questions from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
Late in the evening on Friday, June 19, Barr announced that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, was stepping down, and that Trump would nominate Clayton to replace him. Berman, however, said he had no plans to step down, kicking off a dramatic intra-DOJ stand-off that ended Saturday afternoon.
“When did you first discuss the Southern District job with the president, or the Trump administration, and who did you discuss it with?” Maloney asked. “Attorney General Barr?”
“Look, I’m here as the chairman of the SEC to discuss the work of the SEC,” he replied. “What I can say is that, as I said in my opening statement, I need to go back to New York.”
“I was just asking for a timeline,” Maloney replied. “When did you discuss it? Just give me the approximate date, the timeline.”
“What I want to say is, this is something I’ve been talking about for a while, consulting with people as to whether this would make sense for me to continue in public service,” Clayton continued. “This was first raised to the president and the attorney general last weekend. It was something that I had wanted to do, and they first became aware of it last weekend.”
“Thank you, and did you know that Mr. Berman did not want to leave his job in the Southern District when you agreed to accept the nomination?” she asked. “In other words, did you know he was going to be fired to make room for you, instead, for the job?”
“I’m not going to get into that here,” he replied.
...
“If you are eventually confirmed by the Senate for this job, would you commit to recusing yourself from all of that office’s current investigation into President Trump and his associates?” she asked.
“Here’s what I’m gonna say,” he replied. “That’s a process that’s way down the road. Whatever my current position or any position I take, I commit to doing it independently, without fear or favor, in the pursuit of justice.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not what I was asking,” Maloney shot back, going on to detail why she was pressing him on it.
“I’m asking you a very simple question,” she said. “Will you commit, right here, to recusing yourself from these investigations?”
“That position and that process is something that is separate and doesn’t need my attention. What I will commit to do, what I commit to do in my current job, is to approach the job with independence and to follow all ethical rules.”
Maloney said he still wasn’t answering the question, and said the American people need to know whether or not he will be independent.
“Understood, and I commit to independence,” he replied.
----- 7 -----
The Immigration System Is Set To Come To A Near Halt, And No One Is Paying Attention
"It essentially will shut down the immigration system — sort of the final nail in the coffin."
Hamed Aleaziz BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 30, 2020
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-system-budget-cuts
The US agency that oversees and administers key facets of the immigration system, including the processing of citizenship, green cards, and asylum applications, has taken its first steps to dramatically roll back its capabilities by issuing furlough notices to more than 13,000 employees.
If Congress does not provide US Citizenship and Immigration Services with emergency funding before Aug. 3, the employees, who make up more than 60% of all staffers, will be furloughed for up to three months due to the budget crisis. USCIS is a fee-funded agency that receives most of its money through applications for immigration benefits.
While the reasons for the funding shortage are debated — agency officials cite a massive decline in immigration applications due to the pandemic, while immigrant advocates and experts argue that the Trump administration’s policies have played a part in the budget issues — the impact to the immigration system is not.
“Backlogs will grow longer. People will wait longer to become citizens, get green cards. Asylum will grind to a halt,” said Amanda Baran, a former immigration policy official at the Department of Homeland Security who is now a consultant. The number of furloughed employees, she said, would lead to “devastating consequences for people trying to enter and for those living here.”
"It essentially will shut down the immigration system — sort of the final nail in the coffin,” said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a former agency official. “The anticipated agency furloughs will not only result in the loss of employment for thousands of US workers, it will also bring halt the US immigration system to a grinding halt, negatively impacting families, US businesses, educational institutions, medical facilities, and churches throughout the United States.”
In recent days, USCIS employees have been waiting nervously to receive notices. Some have been spared, while others have not. Of the 2,200 staffers in the division that runs the refugee and asylum work, 1,500 received furlough notices. There’s worry among some that the Trump administration isn’t concerned about immigration and asylum officers being out of work. Overall, the mood within the agency has grown dour as many expect the furloughs to be executed.
----- 8 -----
The Voting Disaster Ahead
Intentional voter suppression and unintentional suppression of the vote will collide in November.
Adam Harris
June 30, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/voter-suppression-novembers-looming-election-crisis/613408/
On June 9, primary day, hundreds of people surrounded Park Tavern, a sprawling brewery and restaurant in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. They queued in six-foot increments, and the line wrapped around the parking lot. Two nearby polling locations were closed, so this was where 16,000 Atlantans were slated to cast their ballots. Across the metro area, more than 80 voting locations had been closed or consolidated over concerns about the coronavirus. What’s worse: The new state-ordered voting machines had stopped working.
Some people waited for more than three hours to vote; others left before casting their ballots. Georgia’s meltdown was not an anomaly. The 2020 primary began with a malfunctioning app in the Iowa caucus, rendering the first-in-the-nation contest moot. One month later, on Super Tuesday, voters met hours-long waits in Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Sacramento. Another month passed, thousands of Americans were dying of the coronavirus, and state officials began canceling primaries. Wisconsin’s state legislature forced its April primary through anyway. Milwaukee voters stood masked in a hailstorm, waiting to vote at one of just five polling places. Any other year would have seen 180 voting locations.
The widespread failures during the primary elections foreshadow a potentially disastrous November election. States such as New York have been racing to make accommodations for voting by mail. But other states are making voting more difficult for residents: Oklahoma is fighting to keep its law requiring that absentee ballots be notarized; Texas will not accept medical vulnerability to the coronavirus as sufficient grounds for absentee voting. Even though greater access to the vote might help a sizable number of Donald Trump’s voters, this opposition to it comes from the top. “Mail ballots, they cheat,” the president has said.
The barriers to ballot access were unacceptable before the pandemic, Leah Aden, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who is actively litigating several voting-rights cases, told me. Black voters, on average, wait 45 percent longer to vote than white voters; Latino voters wait 46 percent longer.* One study, from the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, found that black and Latino voters in Florida were more than two times as likely to have their mail-in ballots rejected as white voters—because of a mix of voter error and how the state processes ballots. To leave that already flawed system unchanged in a pandemic is injurious, Aden said. “The failure to operate in the context that we’re in, which is a pandemic, and proactively use your resources to address the emergence of that: That is also a form of voter suppression.”
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Daniel Dale
twitter.com/ddale8
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1278382908902903808
"Monday...Trump went after attempts to strip the names of racists from buildings. On Tuesday, a...rule meant to combat racial segregation. By Wednesday, Trump was calling the words 'black lives matter' a 'symbol of hate.'"
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-confederate-race/index.html
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Alexander Reid Ross
twitter.com/areidross
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1278378169175699457
A couple weeks ago, people were stunned by a violent militia descending on Bethel. Yesterday a similar event took place in Boise, Idaho. An estimated 500 Nazis, neo-Confederates, and Trumpists swarmed a small "defund the police" rally of 50 protestors, drawing the mayor's ire.
[NEXT]
Here's one video source. Note the guy in green has SS lightning bolts and a 1%er patch, the guy with the Henchmen hat has a Nazi-style totenkopf.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO OF FASCISTS]
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'The president is a danger': Hundreds who served under George W. Bush endorse Biden
The group is the latest of a number of Republican organizations opposing Trump's re-election.
1 July 2020
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/president-danger-hundreds-who-served-under-george-w-bush-set-n1232637
[EDITOR'S NOTE: DO NOT FORGET THAT THESE PEOPLE FACILITATED W. BUSH'S MASSIVE TORTURE REGIME AND ILLEGAL INVASION OF IRAQ. SOME ARE WAR CRIMINALS. THEY MAY BE ALLIES FOR THE MOMENT, BUT THEY ARE NOT FRIENDS.]
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of officials who worked for former Republican President George W. Bush are endorsing Democratic White House hopeful Joe Biden — the latest Republican-led group coming out to oppose the re-election of Donald Trump.
The officials, who include Cabinet secretaries and other senior people in the Bush administration, have formed a political action committee — "43 Alumni for Biden" — to support the former vice president in his Nov. 3 race, three organizers of the group told Reuters, which first reported the story. The group on Wednesday put out a statement announcing its formation.
Bush was the country's 43rd president.
