Trump’s unhinged fans get even more detached from reality as his chances fade




Published 2 hours ago

on August 5, 2020


By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
- Commentary


A pandemic is spiraling out of control and Donald Trump’s reaction is to roll his eyes and say, “It is what it is.” Unsurprisingly, polling data shows that his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, is pulling ahead, not just in national polls, but in a number of battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida, none of which Trump can afford to lose. After all, the incumbent has nothing real to run on. The economy is the worst it’s been since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Americans are losing health insurance by the millions, and Republicans are responding by trying to shortchange unemployment benefits for the millions of people who’ve lost their jobs.

With nothing real to hang on to, it’s no surprise that conservatives — already prone to spreading misinformation — are increasingly addicted to conspiracy theories, wallowing in paranoid fantasies to justify the ludicrous notion that there’s any reason to keep on supporting Trump and the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, this turn towards even greater conspiratorial thinking on the right is also extremely dangerous. There’s already a strong link between right-wing paranoia and right-wing violence. Add the increasing likelihood of Trump’s defeat, the rising stress from the coronavirus, and a blitz of violent propaganda, and there’s a real chance that right-wing conspiracism will lead to even more domestic terrorism, hate crimes and neofascist goons in the streets.

Alex Jones of Infowars, who still has a sizable audience despite having been de-platformed by many major social media companies, shamelessly encouraged his audience last week to lash out with murderous violence against the left.

Jones claimed to have reports that “Maoists” (which is fringe-right code for anyone to the left of Republicans) are stockpiling “explosives and weapons and trucks loaded with ammonium nitrate and chlorine gas” in the cities in preparation to wage war against all true-believing Americans. So “the best thing to do in a defensive way,” Jones said, “is kill as many of them as quickly as possible.”

Jones of course insisted that he was only talking about “defensive” tactics and warned viewers about not “jumping first,” but that rhetoric is mostly a weak attempt at ass-covering to disguise an effort to incite terrorist violence from the right.

For one thing, Jones is just making up the threat that his audience is supposed to be “defending” themselves against. No leftists are not stockpiling weapons or bomb-making materials, and there is no progressive conspiracy to wage war on right-wingers. For another thing, Jones painted a clear picture of the kinds of people he imagines killing as quickly as possible, specifically naming “the establishment perverts and pedophiles” who he believes run society, as well as people who “show up in black uniforms and burn down your local courthouse.”
The former is a reference to Democratic politicians, whom far-right conspiracy theorists have been accusing, under the banner of “Pizzagate,” of running a secret pedophile ring for at least the last four years now. The latter is a reference to Black Lives Matter protesters and anti-fascist activists, the vast majority of whom are peaceful. The right has been demonizing them as violent because of some graffiti and sporadic episodes of vandalism. Neither group is involved in a plot to kill conservatives (or anyone else), but by claiming that they, Jones is setting up a narrative clearly meant to incite or justify violent attacks.

On the Christian right side of things, similar conspiracy theories about progressives are spreading. As Right Wing Watch has documented, popular Christian right activist Scott Lively has claimed that “Democrat-controlled population centers” will soon be burned to the ground, as part of an elaborate conspiracy by liberals to get out of paying pensions to police officers.

Unfortunately, there’s good reason to fear these wild and violent theories are gaining even more traction than usual on the already paranoid far right. On Tuesday, Axios reported a massive surge in online interest in QAnon, which is basically an umbrella movement that organizes all these various right-wing conspiracy theories into one narrative that has become so elaborate and consuming for its followers that it’s almost a religion at this point.



Online searches for QAnon have reportedly exploded tenfold. Similarly, “QAnon pages and groups on Facebook had nearly 10 times more likes at the end of last month than they did last July” and there has been “a 190% increase in the daily average number of tweets with popular QAnon hashtags since March as compared to the seven months prior.”

QAnon followers believe that a shadowy “elite” — which they conflate with Democrats — runs both the country from the shadows and, oh yeah, that they also have a massive pedophilia ring, and that Trump is secretly masterminding a plot to destroy this elite cabal. (In real life, Trump’s reaction to people who run pedophile rings is to say they like “beautiful women” on “the younger side” and also to say “I wish her well.”) It’s a testament to the kinds of pretzels people will tie themselves into in order to believe that there’s anything noble or moral about Donald Trump, or some valid reason to support him.

The rise in interest in QAnon isn’t surprising, as the White House is actively encouraging their voters to get involved with this unified-field conspiracy universe. As Media Matters has reported, Trump has retweeted QAnon Twitter accounts at least 185 times, and “members of Trump’s family, his personal attorney, current and former campaign staffers, and even some current and former Trump administration officials have also repeatedly amplified QAnon supporters and their content.”



Honestly, the supposedly mainstream conservative network Fox News is just as dangerous at this point. Most Fox News hosts are careful to avoid overtly endorsing QAnon, but network content in recent weeks has been perfectly situated to validate and amplify the paranoia about Democrats and progressives who are supposedly gearing up to wage war on conservatives.

Day in and day out, Fox News has broadcast scary images of protesters fighting with police, clouds of tear gas and people running through city streets in the middle of the night, all to make rural and suburban viewers, who are even more shut-in than usual, believe that American cities are war zones right now. Fox News is also blatantly lying to its viewers, blaming “radicals” and “antifa” for the scary images, and not telling viewers that in most cases what they’re seeing is cops provoking conflict, often by chasing down, beating and tear-gassing peaceful protesters.

As those of us who actually live in American cities can attest, they don’t look like war zones, but pretty much like the same places they were before the pandemic and the protests (with a lot less traffic). Even when it comes to the protests themselves, despite some looting and vandalism back in early June, the vast majority of protests have been entirely nonviolent, at least as long as law enforcement isn’t attacking protesters without cause.

In spreading this bald-faced propaganda, Fox News — which tries to position itself as the voice of the Trump-era mainstream right — is working in tandem with cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs conspiracy theorists like QAnon and Alex Jones. Fox News viewers see all these misleading images and hear all this talk about “antifa” and the “radical left,” and it feels like concrete evidence that the conspiracy theorists are right and that “progressives” or “radicals” are starting a civil war. This not only reinforces conspiratorial thinking, but encourages more conservatives to seek out these outrageous theories.




Taken together, the Trump White House, the online conspiracy fringe and Fox News are enveloping Republican voters in this paranoid fantasy that they’re under violent assault from the leftists — and that they need to “defend” themselves through pre-emptive action. There’s already been a rash of violence against protesters, who have been run over with cars or shot down in the streets. Rather than toning it down, Trump and his allies in both “mainstream” and fringe right-wing media have ramped up their rhetoric, painting a lurid and entirely false picture of the supposed threat. Either implicitly, as on Fox News, or explicitly, as with Alex Jones, conservatives are being encouraged to respond to this imaginary threat with violence.

There’s no reason to expect this situation to improve as the November election nears — or after that either, quite likely. Right-wingers are sore losers on a good day, but now they’ve whipped themselves into a paranoid frenzy that is utterly detached from reality and could lead to tragic violence.

Ron DeSantis admits GOP sabotaged unemployment with ‘pointless roadblocks’ so fewer people would sign up

Published on August 4, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


In an interview with CBS4 Miami’s Jim DeFede, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) admitted that Florida Republicans, led by his predecessor, deliberately crippled the state’s unemployment system so that fewer out-of-work people would apply for benefits.

“Do you believe that the system was in part put together the way it was to discourage people from being able to collect unemployment?” asked DeFede.

“I think that was the animating philosophy,” said DeSantis. “I mean having studied how it was internally constructed, I think the goal was for whoever designed, it was, ‘Let’s put as many kind of pointless roadblocks along the way, so people just say, oh, the hell with it, I’m not going to do that.’ And, you know, for me, let’s decide on what the benefit is and let’s get it out as efficiently as possible. You know, we shouldn’t necessarily do these roadblocks to do it. So we have cleared a lot of those.”
When DeFede pointed out to him the current system was designed by former Gov. Rick Scott, now a senator and ally of DeSantis, he replied, “I’m not sure if it was his, but I think definitely in terms of how it was internally constructed, you know. It was definitely done in a way to lead to the least number of claims being paid out.”

For months, Florida Republicans have faced allegations that the unemployment system was broken by design. It has been a massive obstacle as the coronavirus pandemic has shuttered businesses and left millions out of work and reliant on unemployment insurance.

New report accuses Trump of ‘intentional disregard’ and attack on democracy throughout failed COVID-19 response

 August 5, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

“What is becoming clearer each day is President Trump’s intent to use this chaos to create a crisis for our democracy.”

A new report published Wednesday details months of willful failures to confront the coronavirus pandemic by the White House and paints President Donald Trump’s authoritarian tactics during that national crisis as an overt assault on the nation’s democratic institutions ahead of elections in November.

The report by Common Cause—titled “Intentional Disregard: Trump’s Authoritarianism During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” (pdf)—highlights Trump’s coronavirus response as part of a larger effort by the president to attack U.S. democracy

As evidence to support its thesis, Common Cause points to the president’s repeated claim that mail-in voting—favored by 58% of Americans according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday—will result in a “rigged” election. The report also shows how the administration is actively undermining the U.S. Postal Service by naming a top GOP donor with no USPS experience as postmaster general.

“None of President Trump’s efforts to thwart oversight of his administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic come as a surprise. Throughout his presidency, Trump has abused his power to avoid accountability and install loyalists in key oversight positions.”
—Common Cause

“The Trump administration’s failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented public health crisis leading to a worsening economic crisis. What is becoming clearer each day is President Trump’s intent to use this chaos to create a crisis for our democracy,” said Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn.

“Intentional Disregard” catalogues the administration’s steadfast refusal to treat the pandemic as a serious threat, starting on January 3 when a Chinese official first informed the CDC of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

Though the president received several classified, urgent briefings about the threat in early 2020, one of the administration’s earliest responses to the public health crisis was to ignore federal vaccine expert Rick Bright when he “he raised concerns in January about the need to prepare for the coronavirus” and insist that he invest in procuring hydroxychloroquine “without proper scientific vetting.” Bright was dismissed from his role at the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) when he refused.

Common Cause writes in its report that Trump’s response to Bright was indicative of a larger attack on inspectors general at federal agencies, including Christi Grimm. Grimm was ousted from her role as principal deputy inspector general at HHS on May 1, weeks after she published a report about Covid-19 testing supply shortages and widespread shortages of personal protective equipment at U.S. hospitals.

“None of President Trump’s efforts to thwart oversight of his administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic come as a surprise,” Common Cause reports. “Throughout his presidency, Trump has abused his power to avoid accountability and install loyalists in key oversight positions.”

The administration’s aversion to oversight during the pandemic has extended to the appropriation of funds under the $2 trillion CARES Act in March.

“The ink of President Trump’s signature on the CARES Act was not even dry yet when he issued a statement indicating that he would not comply with the oversight provisions” in the bill, according to the report.

The president named White House lawyer Brian Miller as the inspector general for pandemic recovery, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin only agreed to release the names of companies which received aid under the CARES Act after public outcry over his initial refusal to disclose the names.

In a number of ways, the report explains, Trump and his top officials have used the pandemic to divide rather than unite people across the U.S. and to use the crisis to his own political advantage, even as the death toll rose to 1,000 people per day in July.

“We know the government can do better,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, Common Cause vice president for policy and litigation. “Other governments around the world are doing a much better job than our own handling this pandemic. Trump’s decision to politicize everything, including public health guidance, sets us apart from the world.”

The report detailed the president’s politicization tactics including:

his refusal to wear a protective face mask as advised by the CDC, pitting Trump supporters and detractors against one another by speculating in June “that people were wearing masks not as a preventivemeasure but as a way to signal disapproval of him”;

his claim that Democrats are pushing to keep public schools closed unless the federal government devises and fully funds a plan to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in classrooms; 

and

his stoking of outrage over state and local lockdown measures, with groups affiliated with the Trump campaign bankrolling sometimes-violent anti-quarantine protests attended by a small, vocal minority of Americans.
“These groups have had the advantage of being amplified through the social media platform of President Trump,” the report states. “This includes the president tweeting things such as ‘LIBERATE MICHIGAN!’ and ‘LIBERATE MINNESOTA!’ When asked about whether he would urge protesters to follow the rules of local authorities, Trump all but confirmed that the protesters are following his rhetoric closely by saying, ‘I think they listen to me. They seem to be protesters that like me and respect this opinion.'”

A section of the report draws attention to the president’s attempts at “information manipulation,” including his undermining of the USPS.

As Common Dreams reported last week, following Trump’s appointment of former Republican National Committee chair Louis DeJoy as postmaster general, members of the postal workers union have raised alarm about new mail sorting procedures and overtime cuts that have already led to mail delivery delays in battleground states.

“Congress must step up to stop Trump from undermining the postal service by turning it into a partisan weapon as we head toward national elections, which will depend on the postal service more than ever,” Common Cause writes, as voters across the country will rely on a vote-by-mail system during the 2020 elections to cast ballots without risking Covid-19 infection.

Although Trump himself voted by mail in the 2018 election and several states including solidly-red Utah have held elections via mail for years, the president has repeatedly claimed voting by mail will be used to rig the presidential election in Democrats’ favor.

“Trump’s claims against vote-by-mail are simply NOT true,” tweeted Bette Marchant, chief financial officer at Common Cause.

Trump’s claims against #VoteByMail are simply NOT true. He continues to spread lies and threatened to withhold #FederalFunds to states that protect their citizens’ #RightToVote. https://t.co/bezHZ3ivdn
— Bette Marchant (@BetteMarchant) August 5, 2020

The report alleges that Trump “continues to spread lies” and rebukes the president for threatening to withhold federal assistance to states that implement robust vote-by-mail strategies. “It seems that he believes he is the only person who should be allowed to exercise his right to vote while protecting his health during the Covid-19 pandemic,” it states.

Ryan, speaking for Common Cause, said the November elections will be the “opportunity for Americans to hold government accountable” and that his group’s focus nationwide will be that “every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot safely and securely.”

In its report, Common Cause recommends a number of steps lawmakers must take to ensure U.S. democracy survives the coronavirus pandemic and that Americans are afforded the opportunity to remove Trump from office in November, including:
passing the HEROES Act and the For the People Act, both of which have been approved by the Democratic-led House and would expand vote-by-mail and fund this year’s elections;
ensuring federal oversight of Covid-19 relief through the passage of the Coronavirus Oversight and Recovery Ethics Act of 2020 (CORE Act); and
protecting inspectors general from firing without cause by passing the Inspector General Independence Act.

“Enactment of these reforms would make the government more responsive and accountable to the American people and less susceptible to authoritarians like President Trump,” the group said.

HERE, HERE!
‘America is out of its mind’: Texas doc goes on viral rant about pushing schools to reopen during pandemic

Published  August 5, 2020 By Brad Reed



A doctor based in Austin, Texas this week uncorked an angry rant about President Donald Trump’s push to force schools to reopen in the middle of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Writing on Twitter, Dr. Pritesh Gandhi argued that American schools are in no condition to reopen at the moment, especially given that the disease is still infecting tens of thousands of people every day.

“America is out of its mind thinking we are even remotely prepared for school this fall,” wrote Gandhi, who earlier this year made an unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in Texas’s 10th Congressional District. “We are definitely NOT ready & if people say we are, it’s either out of ignorance or arrogance.”

Gandhi explained that the inability to rapidly turn around test results will become particularly dangerous in the fall, especially when hospitals are also dealing with an influx of flu cases.

“When stay-at-home dad has a fever, waiting one week for test results does nothing for his 3 young children & their school,” he wrote. “Americans do NOT have access to care. Americans do NOT have the $$ to pay for testing & treatment. And, our states by and large are still not prepared for massive contact tracing.”

All of this was the result, he added, of “the absolute disregard for life by this administration & its enablers.”

Gandhi’s rant has since gone viral and has been retweeted more than 33,000 times.

Read the entire thread there.

‘Taking taxpayers for a ride’: Moderna to charge $32-$37/dose for COVID-19 vaccine developed entirely with public funds

August 5, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


“It ought to be the people’s vaccine, not a new taxpayer burden.”

Consumer advocates warned Wednesday that pharmaceutical giant Moderna is “taking taxpayers for a ride” after the company announced plans to charge between $32 and $37 per dose for a potential Covid-19 vaccine developed entirely with funds from the U.S. federal government.

“Taxpayers are paying for 100% of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine development. All of it,” Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines Program at Public Citizen, said in a statement. “Yet taxpayers may wind up paying tens of billions more to Moderna to buy our vaccine back, if it proves safe and effective.”

“Taxpayers are paying for 100% of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine development. All of it. Yet taxpayers may wind up paying tens of billions more to Moderna to buy our vaccine back.”
—Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen





“The so-called Moderna vaccine belongs in significant part to the people of the U.S,” said Maybarduk. “We paid for it. Federal scientists led the way. It ought to be the people’s vaccine, not a new taxpayer burden.”

The experimental vaccine is currently undergoing a Phase 3 clinical trial that is expected to enroll around 30,000 adult volunteers who do not have Covid-19, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Trial results are expected as early as October.

“Results from early-stage clinical testing indicate the investigational mRNA-1273 vaccine is safe and immunogenic, supporting the initiation of a Phase 3 clinical trial,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement last week.

For context, the $32-$37/dose Moderna cites for smaller volume agreements of #COVID19 vaccine is 60% more (on low end) than Pfizer price of $19.95/dose agreement with U.S. govt.

Moderna notes price would be lower for larger volume agreements.
Price would go up after pandemic. https://t.co/eki26YgK07
— Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell) August 5, 2020

Under pressure from advocacy groups to publicly disclose how its potential vaccine is being financed, Moderna told Axios Wednesday that U.S. taxpayers are providing “100% funding of the program.”

Since April, the Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company has received nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer grants to develop a vaccine as part of the Trump administration’s so-called Operation Warp Speed.

“The company received $483 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in April to support its vaccine development,” CNBC reported. “Last month, it announced it received an additional $472 million from the U.S. government.”

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in a blog post Wednesday that “this funding paid for the research and testing” and “it also meant that the government took all the risk.”

“If Moderna’s vaccine turns out to be ineffective,” wrote Baker, “the government will be out the money, not Moderna.”

Despite the fact that Moderna’s price tag for its coronavirus vaccine is the highest yet announced by any corporation involved with Operation Warp Speed, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel on Wednesday characterized the cost as a discount during a conference call announcing the company’s massive second-quarter revenue increase.

But Public Citizen noted the absurdity of charging the public anything at all for a vaccine developed entirely with taxpayer funding.

“They want us to buy back a vaccine developed with our tax dollars,” the group tweeted.

Herbivores face higher extinction risk than predators: study


Herbivores face a higher risk of extinction than predators, whether they are mammals, birds or reptiles, according to an extensive study of 24,500 species both living and extinct that was published Wednesday.

The paper, which appeared in Science Advances, suggests herbivores have suffered a higher extinction rate over the past 50,000 years compared to other parts of the food web and the trend continues to this day

This contradicts the idea, based on anecdotal evidence, that predators are the most vulnerable because they have extensive home ranges and slow population growth rates.

The threat is greatest for reptile herbivores, such as turtles, and large herbivores, like elephants.

There is so much data out there and sometimes you just need someone to organize it,” said Trisha Atwood, an ecologist at Utah State University and the first author of the study.

Researchers first looked at modern day extinction risk patterns among herbivores, omnivores and predators in mammals, birds and reptiles at different levels of the food web.

They performed the same analysis on species from the late Pleistocene epoch, beginning 11,000 years ago for Africa, North America and South America, and 50,000 years ago for Australia

Finally, they examined how body size and position in the food web affected the threat status among 22,166 living species.

The authors wrote that though there are probably several reasons for the trend, certain man made interventions seemed to affect herbivores more than others.

“Invasive vertebrates (e.g., rats), insects (e.g., fire ants), and plants (e.g., Hottentot fig) have all been implicated in the decline and even extinction of several reptiles,” they said.


What’s more, invasive species, pollution and habitat alteration appeared to affect small herbivorous birds disproportionately.

There are certain exceptions: predators living in marine habitats did face an elevated extinction risk, suggesting they faced existential pressures than their land-dwelling counterparts.

Ilhan Omar Didn’t Expect “A Red Carpet Welcome” To Congress

Ilhan Omar, facing a primary based in part on her national image, said in an interview her image and identity justify her politics.

molly Hensley-Clancy BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on August 3, 2020

Eman Mohammed For BuzzFeed News
Representative Ilhan Omar, poses for a portrait during an interview at a cafe in Washington DC in 2018.

There have been many fights over the past two years, and for Ilhan Omar, all of them have deep roots in her own identity: as an immigrant, a refugee, a Muslim, and a Black woman.

She draws a direct line from her identity to her place at the center of two years’ worth of attacks from the right, the news stories, the controversies, and now to the well-funded and bitter primary challenge she is facing in her deep-blue district in Minneapolis.

“No one has ever been in Congress who represents as many of the marginalized identities that I represent in one body, and who has been a first in the ways that I’ve been a first,” she told BuzzFeed News.

“To be the only member in Congress that comes from a country that is currently on the president’s Muslim ban — I did not expect there to be a red carpet welcome situation.”

In a 30-minute interview ahead of the primary election next week, Omar spoke about the ways her identity has shaped every facet of her time in Congress.

Omar believes her identity has fueled attacks against her. But just as directly, Omar says, it has shaped the work she has done — and the battles she has waged — on the floor of Congress.

“My constituents knew that I wasn’t just going to use my voice and resources in uplifting these communities,” Omar said. “They knew I was going to use my own experience to bring about change and shift the narrative.”

Omar’s primary race with Antone Melton-Meaux, a local lawyer, has commanded the same kind of outsized national attention that she has drawn her entire career.

With no previous political experience or public profile, Melton-Meaux has raised huge sums of money to challenge Omar, much of it from the many people who dislike her. Though Omar’s campaign released internal polling showing her far ahead of Melton-Meaux, her staff have been telegraphing differently, treating him as a serious challenger. Her campaign released its first attack ad against him last week.

At the core of Melton-Meaux’s campaign is Omar’s national profile — and the “distractions” that have come from a list of partly self-created controversies, including her use of anti-Semitic tropes and repeated questions over her campaign sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to her husband’s political firm.

Both campaigns have papered the district with a flood of mailers, an unusual occurrence in a district that is one of the most liberal in the country. One flyer, from Melton-Meaux, declares: “Ilhan Omar Is in the News Again.”

Omar is also in the forefront of President Donald Trump’s latest attack ad against Joe Biden, alongside Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which Trump’s campaign says is now airing on TV in key swing states.

So far, Omar said, very little of what she has faced in Congress has surprised her.

"I did expect it to be this way," she said. “I did expect it to be as relentless as it’s been.”

What has been a surprise, Omar said: the work she believes she's been able to accomplish in the House. She first ran, she said, expecting huge roadblocks to success in “a place that was not built for me.”

One of the first votes the House took when she arrived was on a new policy allowing members like her to wear religious head coverings on the floor of Congress: “Our first challenge was even making that happen, so that I could actually sit as a member of Congress and represent the 708,000 people who had elected me,” she said.

Omar has sat on several major House committees. Of the bills she has introduced, some, like a bill to cancel all rent, are symbolic, amounting to a progressive pipe dream — a fact that has drawn criticism from Melton-Meaux. But a bill Omar introduced to expand access to school meals during the coronavirus pandemic was passed into law as part of the stimulus package.

For Omar, all of that, too, is directly tied to her identity. As a refugee, she said, she had experienced what it was like to not know where your next meal was coming from.

She has more recently been tightly drawn into the protests against systemic racism.

As a Black woman, Omar said she had long seen the failures of the Minneapolis Police Department. After George Floyd, a Black man, was killed in police custody in the heart of Omar’s district, she joined calls to defund the Minneapolis police, replacing them with what Omar called a “reimagining” of public safety.

Nationally, calls to defund the police have also provided fuel for Republicans, who see it as an issue unpopular with swing voters. But Omar said her focus, in calling for defunding and abolishing the police, was squarely on Minneapolis.

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“For me, it was really important to distinguish the call for defunding nationwide from our call for dismantling,” Omar said. “Our police department has failed to investigate and solve 50% of homicides; they’ve engaged, reportedly, in destroying rape kits; and they’ve lost credibility with many institutions that would partner with them. The failure of attempted reforms are laid bare in our case.”

Omar’s identity also shaped her decision to endorse Joe Biden — even though she had been a prominent supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, another prominent Sanders backer and member of the so-called Squad of Democratic women of color, has declined to do so.

“That was not really a question for me,” Omar said of endorsing Biden. “There is, personally, too much at stake for me, and there is personally too much at stake for many people who share the marginalized identities that I represent.”


MORE ON ILHAN OMAR
The National Obsession Around Ilhan Omar Is Fueling Her Primary Opponent

Molly Hensley-Clancy · July 10, 2020

Molly Hensley-Clancy is a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

#KAKISTOCRACY

Trump Vaccine Adviser Warns That Scrutiny Of Him Will Delay Arrival Of Coronavirus Vaccine

HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo went even further, arguing the media doesn't want a vaccine to succeed before the election. “I believe that all the way in my aorta.”

Paul McLeod BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on August 3, 2020

Drew Angerer / Getty Image
President Donald Trump and Moncef Slaoui in the Rose Garden

The chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program investing billions of dollars into discovering a coronavirus vaccine, says media scrutiny of his stock ownership may delay a vaccine or make its discovery less likely because it is distracting him from his work.

Moncef Slaoui made the remarks on the official Health and Human Services podcast, released Friday, while being interviewed by Michael Caputo, HHS assistant secretary of public affairs. The interview quickly descended into a lengthy rant about the media.

“The American people need to understand that the media often times are lying to them because they don’t want a vaccine, in order to defeat Donald Trump,” Caputo said at one point.

The two men took extensive issue with news stories about Slaoui. He is working as a contractor voluntarily, drawing payment of only $1. As news reports have outlined, this exempts him from ethics rules that would apply to federal employees.

Slaoui worked for 30 years in senior roles at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. He still holds significant stock in the company. The HHS inspector general ruled that he can continue to own stock in the pharmaceutical industry and is exempt from disclosure rules that would apply if he joined the government.

After introductions, the podcast interview pivoted to the media’s treatment of Slaoui. Caputo said that by joining Operation Warp Speed, Slaoui put a target on his back. Slaoui agreed and said he was naive. He said the media attention has distracted him and hurt the development of a vaccine

“I’m amazed that I’m being attacked on a personal basis in a way that frankly distracts my energy and the energy of all the teams we’re working together with to deliver, and therefore decreases our chances or the speed with which we try to help humanity and the country resolve and address this issue,” he said.

Slaoui said he is convinced the press has only one objective, which is “to distort information in a way that allows them to shape an opinion.”

Caputo then praised Slaoui for working for free and ridiculed the notion of him trying to enrich his former company. “I don’t recognize the media anymore,” he said. “I’m convinced that the reporters don’t want a vaccine, sir. They don’t.”

As of Monday, 4.7 million Americans have tested positive for COVID and over 155,000 people have died. There has recently been an average of about 1,200 new deaths every day.

Slaoui said on the podcast that the news stories have been “insulting to the deepest of my personal fibers” and challenged the media on what they are doing to help during the pandemic. Caputo singled out one reporter who wrote about Slaoui in particular, Noah Weiland of the New York Times. “I can tell you, sir, I will not speak to Noah Weiland. He calls my phone, I don’t answer it. It’s unethical reporting.”

Caputo then turned to Democrats who have questioned Slaoui’s contract arrangement, saying they do not want there to be a vaccine until after the Nov. 3 election. “I don’t want to talk about politics here,” Caputo said before adding “they don’t want a vaccine now because of politics.”

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Slaoui said he also didn’t want to talk about politics and is focused on discovering a vaccine. “I am resentful for actions that knowingly or unknowingly curtail that effort. That’s inappropriate, that’s wrong, that’s unethical,” he said.

“It’s inhumane,” said Caputo.

Slaoui responded, “I agree.”

Caputo then outlined his theory that the media are writing stories about Slaoui to try to get him to leave Operation Warp Speed because they want it to fail. Reporters are doing this because they are “so deeply unethical and so filled with hatred.”

Lest anyone think he was merely being hyperbolic, Caputo stressed that he believes this worldview “all the way in my aorta.”

Patients Over Pharma is one of the progressive groups that has questioned whether former pharmaceutical executives should oversee a project that will dispense billions of dollars to the industry. Spokesperson Eli Zupnick said Monday that everyone wants Slaoui to succeed, but there’s no reason he can’t do that while adhering to transparency and ethics guidelines.

“Dr. Slaoui doesn’t seem to understand that what he perceives as attacks aren’t personal and they aren’t ‘fake news,’” said Zupnick. “They are about making sure that the public can trust that Operation Warp Speed is operating in the best interests of patients and public health and not engaging in the cronyism and corruption that is so pervasive through the Trump administration.”

Paul McLeod is a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Elizabeth Warren Wants To Know Why This Company Was Spying On BLM Protesters

A group of Democratic lawmakers is demanding answers about protester surveillance conducted by data broker Mobilewalla.

Caroline Haskins BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on August 4, 2020

Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during a news conference.

Four lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said Tuesday that they have "serious concerns" about data-mining company Mobilewalla following a BuzzFeed News story in June that showed the company had used cellphone location data to predict the race, age, gender, and home location of more than 17,000 Black Lives Matter protesters.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Mobilewalla CEO Anindya Datta, Warren, Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, and House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney demanded more information about the data that the company collects and how it’s used. They also asked which, if any, American and non-American governments have accessed the data.

The lawmakers, who said they were “concerned that data collected by Mobilewalla or other data brokers could be used to enable state-sponsored retaliation against protesters,” demanded Datta respond by Aug. 17.

“In June, your company released a report that disturbingly revealed that location data collected from cell phones was used to identify specific characteristics of American protesters at Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the United States,” the letter read. “We have serious concerns that your company’s data could be used for surveillance of Americans engaging in Constitutionally-protected speech.”

As BuzzFeed News reported, Mobilewalla analyzed location information data it collected from thousands of protesters' cellphones at protests in Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta between May 29 and May 31. Mobilewalla used this data to predict if protesters were male or female, young adult (18–34); middle-aged (35–54), or older (55+); and “African-American,” “Caucasian/Others,” “Hispanic,” or “Asian-American.” By using long-term location data, Mobilewalla also attempted to predict whether protesters were from the city of the protest or out of town. These findings were compiled in a report titled “George Floyd Protester Demographics: Insights Across 4 Major US Cities.”

Asked in June why Mobilewalla conducted this research, Datta offered little in the way of explanation. “It’s hard to tell you a specific reason as to why we did this,” he said. “But over time, a bunch of us in the company were watching with curiosity and some degree of alarm as to what’s going on.”

In their letter, the lawmakers said Mobilewalla had surveilled people who were “participating in First Amendment-protected activities." They also suggested that if the company gave cellphone data to a government agency, it may have violated a 2018 Supreme Court ruling which requires police to get a warrant first. There's currently no federal law that regulates how data brokers like Mobilewalla can buy, repackage, and sell people’s information.

In its privacy policy, Mobilewalla says it gets people’s information by purchasing mobile location data, browsing history, and device information from advertisers, data brokers, and internet service providers. Using artificial intelligence, the company then analyzes that information to predict people’s race, age, gender, zip code, and personal interests. It sells this information to advertisers to help them target people with ads.

However, Mobilewalla also has a history of working for political groups. As Motherboard reported, the company has worked with Republican super PACs, including efforts that targeted evangelical voters during the 2016 presidential election. Mobilewalla CEO Datta said in a podcast interview with Nathan Latka that the company monitored the movements of possible evangelicals on Election Day and told campaign workers how many of them were near a voting location.

Got a tip about Mobilewalla or another location-tracking company? You can contact Caroline Haskins on a nonwork device via Signal at +1 785-813-1085 or via email at caroline.haskins@buzzfeed.com or caroline.haskins@protonmail.com.

Thousands of people in hundreds of cities have demonstrated against police brutality following the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, often demanding that cities defund their police departments and reallocate that money toward social services and education.

Police have sometimes retaliated against protesters violently, using weapons like tear gas, batons, mace, and their own police vehicles. In cities like Portland and New York, plainclothes federal offices have arrested demonstrators by sweeping them away in unmarked vans.

In their letter, the lawmakers asked Datta if Mobilewalla has collected and analyzed data from protesters in Portland, and if the company planned to put out a report or provide that data to law enforcement.


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Caroline Haskins is a technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
 

'An earthquake': Beirut blasts heap further misery on crisis-wracked Lebanon

For the Lebanese people, who have watched helplessly as their economy has collapsed in recent months, the devastation wrought by Tuesday's blasts in Beirut is one disaster too many.

The deadly blasts struck at a time when Lebanon's currency has plummeted against the dollar, businesses have closed en masse and poverty has soared at the same alarming rate as unemployment.

"It's an earthquake," said Kamel Mohanna, founder of the Amel Association International charity founded during the 1975-1990 civil war.

"I've been working in humanitarian aid in Lebanon for 47 years, and I've never seen anything like this," he said as hospitals were overflowing with wounded and the capital was reeling in shock.

Lebanon's government has declared a two-week state of emergency following Tuesday's devastating blasts, which killed more than 100 people and injured thousands more.


For months already, many Lebanese struggling in the country's worst economic crisis in decades have turned to charities once largely dedicated to the nearly two million Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.

Amid the economic turmoil, cash shortages, pandemic and street protests, Lebanon's middle class — teachers, civil servants, nurses — have already seen their lives turned upside down.

>> Lebanon’s neo-liberal wheels sped to a dream future, but the past applies the brakes

Now, after the massive explosions that ravaged Beirut's port, officials estimate that an additional 300,000 residents will be left homeless.

And the disaster damage bill for an indebted country that was already asking for help from international donors is expected to range between $3 billion and $5 billion dollars.

'Asking for alms'

Maya Terro, founder of Food Blessed, a local charity that distributes food aid, now expects a huge additional demand. Beirut's port, which was flattened by the explosions, is the main gateway for imports.

"Lebanon imports 80 percent of its food," Terro said. "Immediately I thought: empty supermarket shelves, increased prices due to shortages."


Inflation of basic food goods already soared by 109 percent between September and May, according to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP).

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization warned Tuesday that, after huge wheat stockpiles at the port were destroyed, "we fear that we will soon have a problem with the availability of flour for the country". 

Even before the explosions, life was a daily struggle against poverty and hopelessness, Gaby, a former civil servant in his fifties living in a suburb of Beirut, told AFP several days before the disaster.

Gaby, who used to fire up the grill twice a month for a family barbecue, said he now has no choice but to go to a charity to get rice and pasta.

"I feel like I am asking for alms," he said.

With hyperinflation, neither his pension — worth $1,600 at official rates, but just $300 on the black market — nor his work as a taxi driver or his wife's salary as a nurse are enough to support family needs.

"We deprive ourselves of a lot," said the father of four. "We used to have meat four times a week. Today, nothing at all, not even chicken."

'Everything is difficult'

Nearly half of Lebanese now live below the poverty line, according to official statistics.

Economic difficulties were a key driver of mass protests that began last year against a political system widely seen as corrupt and inept.

The economic crisis has been compounded by the loss of income caused by restrictions to stem the Covid-19 pandemic.

Two-thirds of Lebanese households have seen their income drop, according to a WFP survey in June, while two-fifths of those questioned had gone into debt to buy food or pay rent.

WFP, working with the government, was planning to boost aid to help 697,000 people this year, up from just under 140,000 in 2019, spokesperson Malak Jaafar told AFP before the explosions.


Amel Association International said that, even before the blasts, it was already seeing a rise in numbers of Lebanese citizens seeking aid in its more than 20 centres, especially for its medical services.

"The first three months of 2020 saw a 30 percent increase in the number of Lebanese beneficiaries," said health programme coordinator Mohammed Al-Zayed.

"In Lebanon the healthcare is based on the private sector. As a result, services are expensive, and people have reached a point where they can no longer pay."

Doctors Without Borders in June received 81 Lebanese patients, about three times the normal number, said Axelle Franchomme, medical director of the Bar Elias hospital in the eastern Bekaa region. 

One of those patients was Ihsane, a woman in her thirties, who had turned to the medical charity for their free gynaecological surgery due to a lack of funds.

"My husband has been out of work for a while," said Ihsane, explaining how they had already sold one of their two cars to raise cash.

"Everything has become difficult, everything is expensive," she said. "We cannot have the same life as before".

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)