After Trump, U.S. Faces Risk Of Slipping Into "Hybrid" Regime

From Venezuela to Belarus, there are countries that have elements of democracy but fall well short of acceptable standards of freedom and transparency. Will the U.S. end up there too?

Lena Surzhko Harned and Luis Jimenez*

 THE CONVERSATION

2020-12-28

 Six weeks after the U.S. election, President Donald Trump had still not accepted defeat. This behavior is not typical in mature democracies. And it's reminiscent of countries with what political scientists call "hybrid regimes" – nations that have elements of democracy but in practice are not democracies.

For us – politics scholars studying Latin America and the former Soviet Union – Trump's resistance to election results underscores the fragility of democratic institutions when confronted with authoritarian practices. These include deligitimizing election results, interfering with judicial independence and attacking independent media and opposition.

Trump is part of a global trend in authoritarianism. The United States can learn a great deal from other countries where democracies fell victim to the authoritarian playbook.

Rigging elections

Trump and members of the Republican Party claimed fraud in the presidential elections. They attempted to overturn legally cast ballots in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. Trump, furthermore, has urged state leaders to ignore the will of voters and give their electoral votes to him.

Disregard for voters and electoral rules are tactics well documented in hybrid regimes. Although Trump has charged that the U.S. election was rigged, it was not.

Truly rigged elections involve practices like ballot box stuffing – adding false ballots to legitimate ones, or buying the electorate by offering citizens money or jobs in exchange for votes.

Barring opposition candidates from running for office, as Russia has done, is another tactic.

Other regimes, like Alexander Lukashenko's in Belarus, pressure electoral officials to falsify electoral results to ensure victories with wide margins. This triggered massive protests in August.

Crowds in Minsk call for the resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko, on Aug. 23, 2020. Ulf Mauder/picture alliance via Getty Images

In Venezuela, since roughly 2005, former President Hugo Chávez seized control of vote processing and counting through the National Electoral Council, a branch of government that oversees elections. This way, any election irregularities always hurt the opposition.

And Chávez encouraged the electorate to vote for him if they were state employees or received government benefits. At times, they received outright threats that they would lose their jobs if they did not vote for him.

Other forms of "encouragement" in Venezuela included "red tents" next to polling stations. These were government stations where people could sign up for government benefits and receive small gifts.

President Trump did something similar by putting his name on stimulus checks in April, which may have been illegal but was never adjudicated.

He also tried to rig the U.S. election by insisting that mail-in votes should not be counted after Election Day, and then attempted to overturn election results based on that claim.

"Enemies of the people"

Coined by the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the phrase "enemies of the people" – used against all who disagreed with him – has entered Trump's vocabulary.

Earlier in his presidency, Trump called the press the "enemies of the people." More recently, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Republican secretary of state, earned this title from Trump after defending his state's election process.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power since 2000 and consolidated his autocratic rule by amending the Russian constitution, has a long list of opposition leaders, civil groups and journalists who have become "enemies of the people."

Pet judiciaries

Before the election, Trump insisted mail voting was riddled with fraud and tried to overturn Nevada's vote-by-mail law. He insisted that there would be election disputes and that filling the Supreme Court seat was crucial for that reason.

Yes, the high court has rejected Trump's efforts to overturn election results. But Trump's audacious attempt mirrors tactics used by authoritarian leaders.

Similar scenarios to the one Trump hoped for played out with Evo Morales in Bolivia and Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras.

Morales and Hernández were able to install judges who ruled that clauses in the constitutions prohibiting reelection were unconstitutional. That, in turn, allowed both leaders to run successfully for reelection.

"Law and order"

Authoritarian leaders also favor "law and order" arguments to justify their legitimacy. They paint themselves as the ultimate arbiters of what presents a threat.

Russia's Putin has emphasized his commitment to stability and security, elevating the status of security forces loyal to him, known as siloviki. These security forces now hold high positions in Russian politics, business and society.

Trump has also cultivated the image of a strongman, calling for the mobilization of the National Guard to quell racial justice protests.

Similar to autocratic leaders in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ukraine, Trump has refused to denounce far-right militias like the Proud Boys, telling them instead to "stand back and stand by," which was interpreted as a command.

And he suggested that people "liberate" Michigan from the state's social distancing measures amid the pandemic, a move critics denounced for inciting insurrection.

Maduro is seen during the United Socialist Party of Venezuela's annual congress on July 31, 2014. Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images

Trump has used ploys from the autocratic playbook throughout his presidency, and that will have lasting consequences.

Trump's rejection of election results damages the legitimacy of the democratic process.

In general, it encourages other autocrats and would-be autocrats to challenge the electoral process if they don't like the results. For the U.S., it promotes the belief that President-elect Joe Biden's presidency will be illegitimate.

A country's stability largely depends on people accepting the results if their side loses. If a significant portion of the public refuses to, history shows that violence will not be far behind.

For the United States, the lesson is stark. Surviving the recent electoral turmoil does not guarantee it will outlast a similar scenario the next time.

Republican leaders' failure to repudiate baseless allegations of electoral fraud – and some Republicans' willingness to pursue legal action based on these claims – further undermines the legitimacy of the democratic process.

Trump was defeated, but Trumpism will have a lasting effect.

---

*Lena Surzhko Harned, Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science, Penn State and Luis Jimenez, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Mar-a-Lago, some revel and some rebel amid Trump's last visit as president

MORE REVEL
Issued on: 28/12/2020 - 

Supporters of US President Donald Trump, shown here cheering at his motorcade in West Palm Beach, Florida, on December 27, 2020, say his presence at his Mar-a-Lago resort has boosted the region's profile SAUL LOEB AFP

West Palm Beach (United States) (AFP)

Donald Trump may soon be dislodged from Washington, but to core supporters in southern Florida he remains an unquestionable hero, their favorite occasional local, whose Mar-a-Lago presence draws global attention to Palm Beach.

The brash Republican is on his final holiday trip to his private club as president, inconveniencing some neighbors who find the area's roads blocked as he shuttles between the "Southern White House" and his Trump International Golf Club.

He airs his election grievances on Twitter and, according to his office, hosts "many calls and... meetings," seemingly ignoring the problems vexing Congress and alarming millions of Americans.

Soon he also may be forced to face a brewing dispute over his Mar-a-Lago resort, whose neighbors have filed a grievance claiming Trump has no legal right to live at the storied property.

But the concerns seemed a world away from the sidewalks of West Palm Beach, where diehard and mostly unmasked supporters welcomed Trump with open arms on Sunday as he returned from a golf outing.

"We love him. It makes all the locals proud to be Americans, seeing our president, the most powerful man in the world, driving by here," carpenter Greg Mooney told AFP outside Corner Store Berto's Bait and Tackle, where he and friends gather whenever Trump arrives for a stay.

They were among several hundred people who lined Southern Boulevard late Wednesday, cheering and waving US and Trump flags along the route to his resort across the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach.

A huge "Trump 2020" banner covered the roof of a real estate office along the route, while American flags rose from pickup trucks bearing Trump paint jobs.

"Four more years!" and "Stop the steal!" supporters chanted, as Trump's motorcade slowed so he could wave at one of the larger crowds to gather here since his presidency began.

- 'Give him a hug' -

Trump's week-plus escape from Washington comes at a moment of deep national anxiety over his refusal to support the latest Covid relief package.

The $900 billion rescue, passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress but belatedly rejected by Trump, is seen as a lifeline for families struggling with financial woes or beset by Covid-19.

Mooney, 43, was less concerned with the rescue package than with Trump's presidency coming to an end.

But he was heartened that so many well-wishers stood "shoulder to shoulder and double-stacked" Wednesday in what may have been a record showing, and said they are likely to keep at it.

"We'll see him all the time," Mooney said, nodding towards Trump's resort.

That remains in doubt. Trump has officially changed his residence from New York to Florida, but Palm Beach neighbors are seeking to prevent him from living at Mar-a-Lago.

In a letter this month reported by the Washington Post, neighbors formally wrote the town of Palm Beach and the US Secret Service asserting that Trump signed away his legal right to live at Mar-a-Lago when he converted the property from his residence to a private club in the 1990s.

The dispute would put Trump in the highly awkward scenario of defending his choice of post-presidency residence.

Many nevertheless back Trump. They cite his 2017 Mar-a-Lago meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Japan's then-prime minister Shinzo Abe as raising Palm Beach's already elite profile.

"A lot of people would love to give him a hug and tell him, 'Hey, we support you, thank you for everything you've done, and we know the truth,'" Mooney said.

Trump relentlessly peddles the baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats stole the November 3 election and handed the presidency to Joe Biden.

Several supporters in West Palm Beach, including Mooney, believe Trump's false narrative and said they still hold out hope that the president miraculously stays in office.

- 'Inconvenienced for years' -

Others, like Roger Everingham, can't wait to see Trump gone for good.

The 82-year-old Biden supporter, who lives directly across the water from Mar-a-Lago, said he has grown frustrated with the area's Trump frenzy.

"But it's a lot of laughs, particularly when I watch the circus as he drives by," Everingham, who ran Palm Beach's iconic Colony Hotel for 20 years, acknowledged as he walked with Louie, his Chihuahua.

That raucous collection of Trump supporters is anything but spontaneous and local, he insisted, noting that most of his neighbors are Democrats.

"They come from somewhere else. They're organized," Everingham said of the crowds. Someone is "absolutely" tipping them off about Trump's movements, he added.

One man who works on Southern Boulevard and supports Trump said he understands the frustration some have about the president's presence.

"A lot of people don't like him. They've been inconvenienced for years because he blocks the roads," said the man, who asked not to be identified.

A more permanent Trump presence could exacerbate problems that wealthy property owners have accessing Palm Beach Island.

One woman expressed her displeasure with Trump on Sunday by holding up a sign near his golf club that read: "Biden won, you lost, get over it!"

Mooney said he is already anticipating cheering Trump along the route in 2024.

"We'll be here four years from now, and do it again."

© 2020 AFP

Trump just cost jobless workers one week of federal unemployment assistance after he failed to sign the relief bill by midnight on Saturday

President Donald Trump did not sign the latest coronavirus relief legislation before midnight on Saturday, costing jobless workers one week of $300 federal unemployment benefits.

State agencies can only distribute benefits for weeks the bill is enacted, meaning the delay could cause the unemployment benefits to be distributed for 10 weeks instead of the intended 11.

About 14 million Americans have also lost unemployment benefits, as two federal programs expired on Saturday.

President Donald Trump did not sign the latest coronavirus relief legislation by midnight on Saturday, a move expected to cost jobless workers at least one week of $300 federal unemployment benefits.

Trump had suggested he might reject the $900 billion stimulus package, which passed in both chambers of Congress earlier this week, unless it includes $2,000 stimulus checks for Americans.

The bill currently includes $600 checks, along with the $300 weekly federal unemployment insurance.

"I simply want to get our great people $2,000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill. Also, stop the billions of dollars in 'pork,'" Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

The president has not made clear whether he will sign the legislation, but the delay puts other federal assistance programs in danger and could prove costly for Americans whose unemployment benefits were supposed to restart December 26.

Video: Federal unemployment benefits expire without signature on COVID-19 relief (KARE-TV Minneapolis-St. Paul)

By not signing the bill before the end of day Saturday, Trump has effectively cut a week of $300 federal unemployment benefits for jobless people, according to Michele Evermore, a policy expert at the National Employment Law Project.

But she cautioned it's hard to project without federal guidance how the holdup would affect other unemployment programs.

"I'm not entirely sure how this will be interpreted - at the very least, we lose a week of the $300," Evermore told Insider. "No matter what, if he doesn't sign, next week it goes down to 10 weeks of an extra $300."

The $300 federal unemployment supplement included in the bill is scheduled to end on March 14, a date that will not change based on when the bill actually becomes law.

Depending on when the bill is signed, labor agencies could restart the payments during the first week of January. Because states cannot provide benefits for weeks that precede the approval of the bill, the $300 supplement may only be in place for 10 weeks, rather than the intended 11.

About 14 million people are at risk of losing unemployment benefits, as Saturday was the last day that two federal unemployment programs distribute their payments. They are the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for gig workers and freelancers and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation for people who exhausted state benefits.

In tweets on Saturday, including one sent hours before midnight, Trump again called for the relief bill to include higher stimulus checks.

Trump could still sign the package in the following days, though he has not indicated whether he will do so.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Nero fiddled. Trump plays golf

Dean Obeidallah

(CNN)America is clearly suffering the wrath of Donald Trump's dark mood after his election loss. We don't have to look far for examples.

First, Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act that funds our military. This action was slammed by numerous members of Congress, including Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said this funding is "absolutely vital to our national security and our troops."

Trump's given reasons for the veto — that "the Act fails to include critical national security measures" and includes provisions "that fail to respect our veterans and our military's history" — had more to do with two of his pet issues than with helping our troops. First is ensuring that military bases named after leaders of the Confederacy are not renamed. Trump probably cares less about the Confederate traitors and protecting the women and men in the armed forces today than about playing to fans of the Confederacy in his political base.

Second, Trump conditioned funding our military on Congress repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects companies like Facebook and Twitter from liability for what is posted on their platforms. At the time of the veto, Trump claimed that Section 230 is a "very dangerous national security risk." But the reality is that Trump has called for that law to be repealed in the past, including in early October when Facebook and Twitter removed his lies minimizing the threat posed by Covid-19. Trump clearly seems to believe that social media companies played a role in his defeat.

Then there's Trump's threatened refusal to sign the bipartisan $900 billion Covid-19 relief bill that his own administration played a lead role in negotiating over the past two months. After the measure finally passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support, Trump took a break from tweeting lies about "election fraud" to insist for the first time that Americans receive a direct stimulus check of $2,000 — up from the $600 in the proposed plan — in exchange for removing "pork" from the bill. If Trump sincerely cared about helping Americans in need — like the nearly 30% of families with children who have reported food insecurity in the time of Covid — he would've been a part of these talks from early on.

Trump's threatened refusal to sign comes across as more callous given that he's currently in the confines of his ritzy private country club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he has been spotted playing golf, despite promising to "work tirelessly." Nero fiddled; Trump played golf.
The result of Trump's refusal to sign this relief bill is an estimated 12 million Americans losing unemployment benefits as of Sunday. It has so far also put the kibosh on funding to help small businesses and $20 billion in funds for the purchase of vaccines so it can be available at no charge for Americans in need.

Trump's last-minute surprise could cause one more horrible consequence: A partial government shutdown starting Monday at midnight if it doesn't get the vital funding included in the relief bill to keep it open.


Trump's wrecking ball of a transition
When you look at what Trump has inflicted upon America, it brings to mind the warning that his niece, psychologist Mary Trump, delivered on my SiriusXM radio show on December 15. Mary Trump stated that she believes her uncle he "hates this country now because he was rejected." She warned that as a nation, "we need to be prepared for anything," adding that her uncle was not only going to continue to attack Republicans who wouldn't join in his efforts to overturn the election, but he would also "go after the rest of us."

Mary Trump's warning was prescient. As she predicted, the President has not just lashed out at Republicans — as he did again Saturday on Twitter when he slammed GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans for refusing to join his conspiracy to overturn the election — but he has come after "the rest of us." And the rest of us includes everyone from those in our military to the millions in need of economic relief from the economic pain caused by the coronavirus closures to those who rely on the federal government being fully open for business.

Trump has even come after the US Supreme Court, slamming it on Saturday as being "totally incompetent and weak" on the "massive Election Fraud" that he claims cost him the race. (Twitter tagged the election fraud claim as disputed — in fact it is false.)

When you look at Trump's latest actions it's hard not to believe he's trying to tear down the country on the way out the door. Is this because the notoriously thin-skinned Trump is simply lashing out? Or is it, as his niece stated, it's because he now "hates" this country because we rejected him? Everything we know about Trump tells us it's likely a bit of both. For the good of our nation, President-elect Joe Biden's January 20 inauguration can't get here soon enough.

Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio's daily program "The Dean Obeidallah Show" and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

Sanders Condemns Trump for Allowing Millions to Lose Unemployment Benefits

Sen. Bernie Sanders heads to the Senate floor at the Capitol

 building on December 20, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

SAMUEL CORUM / GETTY IMAGES

BY Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

PUBLISHED December 27, 2020

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday led progressive lawmakers in condemning President Donald Trump’s refusal to approve a $900 billion Covid-19 relief and spending bill as unemployment coverage expired for millions of Americans on Saturday night as a result of his intransigence.

“What the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning. “Many millions of people are losing their extended unemployment benefits. They’re going to be evicted from their apartments because the eviction moratorium is ending.”

Although Congress on Monday approved a compromise relief bill that would have temporarily averted catastrophic expiration of critical unemployment and other benefits — including an extension of the federal eviction moratorium — during the deadliest period of the pandemic, Trump declined to sign the measure into law, blasting its $600 direct payments to Americans as “a disgrace” and calling for $2,000 stimulus checks instead.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — one of only two House Democrats to vote against the bill — also called its $600 payment “woefully inadequate.”

“I have watched as many of my colleagues rush to provide billions to corporations and wealthy individuals, while admonishing the needs of the majority of families,” Tlaib explained on Monday. “Republicans continue to do all they can do to poison our society further with corporate greed, while abandoning the very people they are supposed to be working for.”

“This is evident by the inclusion of the ‘three martini lunch’ tax giveaway,” she added, referring to a tax deduction for business meals included in the bill.

However, Sanders on Sunday argued that the “terrible economic crisis facing this country” makes action imperative.

“We are looking at a way to get the vaccine distributed to tens of millions of people,” Sanders said, referring to the massive nationwide effort to distribute Covid-19 vaccines. “There’s money in that bill.”

Progressive lawmakers from across the country joined Sanders in urging the relief bill’s passage.

“Here we are with people living on the edge as a result of this pandemic, and [Trump] is playing with their lives and their livelihoods,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) during a Saturday interview on MSNBC. “People can’t afford to live life on the edge… Eight million more people have fallen below the poverty line.”

President-elect Joe Biden joined the chorus of bipartisan voices calling on Trump to sign the bill.

“It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they’ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority,” Biden said in a statement on Saturday.

Trump remained defiant following the expiration of jobless benefits.

“I simply want to get our great people $2,000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill,” he tweeted. “Also, stop the billions of dollars in ‘pork.'”

While the president golfed, Americans suffered. Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, braced for the loss of her $129 weekly lifeline.

“It’s a chess game, and we’re all pawns,” Haines told the Associated Press.

Israel set to approve thousands of illegal settlement 

units

General view over a part of the Jewish East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo on November 16, 2020 in Jerusalem [Amir Levy/Getty Images]

December 27, 2020 

Israel intends to approve thousands of settlement units in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem before the inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden in January, reports Anadolu Agency, quoting local media outlets.

The Israeli KAN channel said the Israeli High Council of Planning and Building – an Israeli official body that supervises settlement construction – will convene in the coming two weeks to approve the construction of thousands of settlement units in the occupied territory.

The channel said the plans are already ready but require approval from the council, adding that Israeli authorities aim to approve the construction before Biden's arrival to the White House in late January.

Read: Israel settlers launch systematic attacks on Palestinian properties

The Israeli Peace Now group said settlement activity has doubled in the occupied Palestinian territories in the past four years during the term of outgoing President Donald Trump.

International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Jewish settlement-building activities there illegal.

Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority condemned the "continuous and increasing aggression" of Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Wafa has reported. The PA Foreign Ministry described the settlers' attacks as "part of a campaign supported and run by the occupation state and its institutions, aiming to Judaise Area C."

This campaign, explained the ministry, is to clear the occupied Palestinian territories of their indigenous inhabitants and replace them with Jewish settlers.

International procrastination over preventing such attacks, the indifference of international organisations and the double-standards applied reflect the "apathy" of the international community towards Israeli crimes, insisted the PA.

Read: PA calls on UN Security Council to stop Israel settler attacks

MİDDLE EAST
Israel to approve thousands of settlement units
Israel aims to increase settlement activity before Biden’s inauguration
News Service14:32 December 27, 2020 AA

File photo

Israel intends to approve thousands of settlement units in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem before the inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden in January, according to local media.

The Israeli KAN channel said the Israeli High Council of Planning and Building -- an Israeli official body that supervises settlement construction -- will convene in the coming two weeks to approve the construction of thousands of settlement units in the occupied territory.

The channel said the plans are already ready but require approval from the council, adding that Israeli authorities aim to approve the construction before Biden’s arrival to the White House in late January.

The Israeli Peace Now group said settlement activity has doubled in the occupied Palestinian territories in the past four years during the term of outgoing President Donald Trump.

International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Jewish settlement-building activities there illegal.

Report: Israel to Populate West Bank with Extra 1 Million Settlers


TEHRAN (FNA)- One million. That is the target the Israeli regime plans to hit with regard to the additional number of its settlers in the occupied West Bank.

In a weekly report, the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements (NBPRS) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) umbrella group announced the news on Saturday, the Palestinian Information Center reported.

It said the Israeli Minister of Settlement, Tzachi Hanegbi, had announced that the regime would proceed with the implementation of the vision based on bringing more than a million Jewish settlers to settlements in the West Bank.

According to the report, the Israeli minister made the announcement during his participation in the opening of a new building in the industrial zone council in Shaer Binyamin, the Psagot settlement.

Earlier in the week, the Israeli minister of transportation, Miri Regev, approved 76 million shekels for the so-called Lubban Bypass, which passes in the vicinity of the Lubban village in Salfit district of the West Bank, a move that will lead to the appropriation of large swaths of agricultural Palestinian land.

A similar road, known as the Hawara bypass, would also expropriate thousands of dunums of Palestinian agricultural land, and work would soon begin there to the Southern parts of Nablus, it said.

A third such road, al-Arroub, bypasses a refugee camp of the same name in al-Khalil (Hebron).

The new project near the Lubban village came in light of Regev’s plan to further expand the Israeli occupation of the West Bank through a large network of roads connecting West Bank settlements with transportation lines inside the 1948 Occupied Palestine.

According to the Hebrew news website, which first revealed the plan, one of the main goals of such projects – set by the Yesha (Settlements) Council in the West Bank last year – is to bring a million Israeli settlers to new settlements in the West Bank within a decade and a half.

Earlier, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed in an investigative report that Tel Aviv intended to carry out the annexation plan through the implementation of expansionary settlement projects in various parts of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem al-Quds.

The NBPRS said in its weekly report on Saturday that settler attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank had soared recently.

It added that most of these attacks focused on closing road junctions between cities, physical assaults, damaging property, and throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles.

According to the report, these attacks occurred in various areas, including Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem al-Quds, al-Khalil, and the village of Musafir Yatta in particular.

It also pointed to frequent attacks by groups of extremist settlers and a group known as the “youth of the hills” in Nablus against Palestinians on the bypass roads near Yitzhar settlement, as well as attacks in Salfit and al-Aghwar.

In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured and annexed East Jerusalem al-Quds, in a move that has never won international recognition, along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The West Bank settlements have mushroomed throughout the years and successive administrations. Currently, more than 400,000 Israelis live in settler units there, with another 200,000 in East Jerusalem al-Quds.

PRISON NATION USA 

States Say They’re Decarcerating, Yet 1 in 5 Prisoners Has Had COVID

A California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officer wears a protective mask as he stands guard at the front gate of San Quentin State Prison on June 29, 2020, in San Quentin, California.  JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES

“Some of us wear masks even in our beds, but it feels futile,” said Sarah Jo Pender, incarcerated at the Rockville Correctional Facility, one of Indiana’s three women’s prisons. “There is little to do except watch the infection spread and wait my turn to suffer.” These measures did not prevent Pender and six of the 14 women in her cell from contracting COVID-19. They were not alone: As of December 18, the prison had tested 1,050 women; 302 (nearly 29 percent) tested positive.

On December 10, nearly nine months after the virus exploded across the United States, prisons reported 276,235 confirmed COVID cases, a rate more than four times as high as that among the general public. One in five prisoners has had COVID-19. Prisons have had at least 1,738 deaths from COVID. (These figures only include state and federal prisons, not jails, immigration prisons or juvenile detention.) Prisons have had at least 1,647 deaths from COVID.

And the impacts of incarceration-related COVID outbreaks extend beyond the jail walls: Guards and others traveling in and out of prisons have contributed to community spread. A new report by the Prison Policy Initiative estimated that, in the summer alone, prisons and jails contributed to more than half a million, or roughly 13 percent of, additional COVID-19 cases nationwide.

From the start of the pandemic, public health and medical officials warned that incarcerated people were uniquely vulnerable to COVID and its most severe complications. Many people enter prison with a raft of preexisting health conditions. Inside the prison, they are unable to physically distance from each other or adhere to other Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, such as frequent hand washing, using alcohol-based sanitizers or wearing masks. Many prisons did not issue masks for weeks, forcing incarcerated people to risk sanctions when they improvised masks from other pieces of clothing.

Experts’ predictions quickly came true as several jails and prisons emerged as the nation’s top hotspots. Family members and advocates, ranging from prison reformers to prison abolitionists, demanded decarceration, or the mass release of people from jails and prisons, to stem the spread.

The response varied from state to state and even county to county, but some jails and prisons did make real population reductions. Now, as a far worse second wave washes over the country, some jurisdictions are beginning to reverse their reductions.
Did Decarceration Happen?

Some jails, such as Chicago’s Cook County Jail, allowed some people awaiting trial to swap overcrowded dorms for electronic monitors (though the county quickly ran out of monitors, forcing people to remain in jail). Other jurisdictions such as Palm Beach, Florida, firmly resisted decarceration, declaring that they would not release anyone without a court order. Across the country, jail populations decreased from 738,400 in December 2018 to 575,952 in July 2020.“There is little to do except watch the infection spread and wait my turn to suffer.”

The response also varied among prison systems. Federal prisons decreased their populations by less than 20,000 — from 175,315 in March 2020 to 156,968 in August. Even these 20,000 releases are not all responses to COVID. Nazgol Ghandnoosh, senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project, noted that it is unknown what percentage were those already scheduled for release regardless of the pandemic. It is also unknown how these numbers are affected by a reduced intake of people from jails during the pandemic. In addition, as reported earlier, many people continue to languish in federal prisons across the country despite memos from then-Attorney General William Barr directing that people vulnerable to COVID complications be released from prison to home confinement.

On the state level, nearly 53,000 people were released from state prisons between December 31, 2019, and May 1, 2020. Again, it is not known how many of these numbers are from COVID-based early release and how many would have been released regardless. California’s prison system has boasted that it has reduced its prison population by 22,148 since March 11, largely by expediting the release of those scheduled to leave prison within months.

Michigan increased the number of people approved for parole by approximately 200 per week to reduce prison density. In June, its Department of Corrections reported that its prison population had decreased by 1,958 people (5 percent) since March 20. New York’s prison system allowed 3,145 people to be released early, a decrease of approximately 8.8 percent. New Jersey released more than 2,200 people, or 16 percent of its adult prison population, who had less than a year remaining on their prison sentences.

These decreases are not necessarily extraordinary, noted Ghandnoosh, especially when examined in the context of the roughly 600,000 people typically released from prisons annually.

Meanwhile, some states such as Indiana have resisted implementing early release policies.

Furthermore, population reductions have not been enough to stem the spread. California’s prisons remain at 105 percent capacity; of its 92,170 prisoners, 5,343 have active COVID cases and 93 have died. New York’s prisons reported 120 new cases in early December, bringing its total to 1,959 cases among its 35,353 state prisoners.

In Michigan, the numbers are even more stunning. With the help of the state’s National Guard, the Department of Corrections tested all 34,000 remaining prisoners. As of December 17, 19,710 have tested positive (with 6,727 active cases) and 104 have died, a dramatic increase from the 3,944 cases and 68 deaths in June. Even more alarming, 115 people who had previously tested positive for COVID have tested positive for a second time. At its Gus Harrison Correctional Facility, over 72 percent (or 1,423) of the 1,955 incarcerated men tested positive; six have died.

A Reversal in Reductions — and a Surge in COVID

As the pandemic drags on and the threat of COVID transmission becomes a normalized reality, incarceration reductions are reversing. From March to July, the majority of 514 jails surveyed by the Prison Policy Initiative had reduced the number of people behind bars by an average of 26 percent. Since July, however, 77 percent of these same jails saw increases in their populations, a trend, says the Prison Policy Initiative, “suggesting that the early reforms instituted to mitigate COVID-19 have largely been abandoned.” Some, such as the jails in Cook County, Illinois, and Jefferson, Louisiana, have managed to slightly surpass their pre-pandemic (February) populations. Others have seen dramatic increases — St. Lucie, Florida, for example jailed 808 people in February; throughout the pandemic, it has steadily increased its jail population to 1,332 people as of December 4.“Our rooms are fenced-in cubicles with 14 to 16 women per room,” she explained. “We live in bunk beds separated by three feet. Every 136 women share two bathrooms.”

State prison populations are also beginning to climb again. North Dakota’s prison population, which decreased by 19 percent between January and May 2020, is starting to inch up. From October 8 to November 19, the state increased its prison population by 3 percent. By Halloween, its prisons saw a surge in COVID: 66 of its 600 incarcerated people as well as 21 of approximately 200 staff members tested positive.

Prison intakes, previously halted in many states to prevent COVID exposure, have restarted. Each new arrival brings the potential for COVID to enter — and explode throughout the prison. New arrivals are supposed to undergo 14 days of quarantine before mixing with the general population, but this is not always the case. In New York, for instance, when prison officials first converted Adirondack Correctional Facility into a prison for men ages 65 and older, men reported not being tested or quarantined upon arrival.

Quarantine also didn’t stop COVID from exploding at Rockville, the Indiana prison where Sarah Jo Pender is incarcerated. “Our rooms are fenced-in cubicles with 14 to 16 women per room,” she explained. “We live in bunk beds separated by three feet. Every 136 women share two bathrooms.”

Rockville did not experience a COVID outbreak in the spring or summer. That changed in the fall when a few women tested positive. In response, the prison quarantined the women and their roommates in the prison gym. Then, a mental health counselor tested positive. The prison quarantined the counselor’s patients in the prison’s education building. The patients’ roommates were locked in their rooms to quarantine. “The administration requires masks to be worn when we exit our rooms, but since we are locked in our rooms all together, that really doesn’t seem like an effective tactic to prevent contagion,” Pender said.

In addition, all 136 women in one housing unit share two bathrooms. The prison continued to allow the quarantined women to use the same bathrooms as the women who were not under quarantine. Cases began to rise exponentially. “Two cooks and a food line worker tested positive,” recalled Pender. “Then a maintenance worker. Then several women in one room. Now, over half the prison is quarantined.” Still, testing was not universal. Only those who exhibit symptoms and report these symptoms to medical staff were tested.

As of December 8, 225 (nearly 24 percent) of the prison’s 954 women tested were positive. “Now,” reported Pender, “when a person tests positive, the policy is to lock the door, confining the sick person(s) together with her roommates.” She noted that, in one room, 11 of 14 women tested positive. All 14 were locked in the room under isolation. “The other three are simply shut in there and fervently praying for protection.” Similarly, when Pender and six of her roommates tested positive, the five who did not were not moved from their shared cell.

In an email to Truthout, David Bursten, chief communications officer for the Indiana Department of Correction, stated that those found to have symptoms or were exposed to a known COVID-19 person are immediately tested and screened by medical staff and receive care as needed.“The women who get sick after being quarantined do not report their symptoms, because if they do, and test positive, then the 14-day period starts over for the whole room.”

In response to Pender’s allegations, Bursten wrote, “For prisons that have dormitory-style housing, other dorms or spaces may be used for separation if available and appropriate. In some instances, incarcerated individuals who test positive have been temporarily housed with those who are negative while we have readied additional space at the facility in order to separate them. That is why we require that they wear face coverings, socially distance and practice frequent hand washing.”

“I tested positive on the 10th. Here it is, 11 days later, and neither me nor any of the dozens of women who tested positive on this section of the dorm were separated,” Pender reminded Truthout on December 21. “116 of 136 they locked in our rooms, the sick with the healthy. Four went to the infirmary. The other 16 are in one room where no one was tested, and no one reported symptoms.”

Now, the prison has started to isolate those who newly test positive into the gym, then lock down their roommates. But, added Pender, those roommates are not tested unless they exhibit symptoms.

Pender has lost her sense of smell and, with very few exceptions, says everything tastes like cardboard and mudpies. She also has an intermittent fever, headaches, extreme fatigue and brain fog. Her roommates have varying degrees of the same symptoms.

Furthermore, Pender believes the number of COVID cases are higher than those reported. “The women who get sick after being quarantined do not report their symptoms, because if they do, and test positive, then the 14-day period starts over for the whole room. So there are a LOT of unreported positive cases here.”

The failure to meaningfully decarcerate jails and prisons has also led to increased cases in the community as staff travel between work and their home communities on a daily basis.Between California, Florida and Texas, mass incarceration contributed to a quarter million new COVID cases from May 1 to August 1.

Between California, Florida and Texas, mass incarceration contributed to a quarter million new COVID cases — or 20 percent of new cases in these states — from May 1 to August 1. Despite its much-touted release of 22,148 people from prisons, the Prison Policy Initiative estimated that California’s incarceration alone contributed 113,969 COVID cases (or 291 cases per 100,000 residents).

In Indiana, where Pender and many other women wear their masks to bed in a desperate bid to avoid COVID, the state’s insistence on keeping people in prison led to 6,879 additional cases (or nearly 104 per 100,000 residents). In Parke County, where Rockville is located, 28 percent of residents tested positive. (Twenty percent of Rockville staff also tested positive.)

In Michigan, mass incarceration led to an additional 4,787 COVID cases (or 48 per 100,000 residents) throughout the state.

That was what prompted residents of Adrian, Michigan, the town where the Gus Harrison prison is located, to join family members and advocates during their December 11 protest demanding the release of aging and medically vulnerable people.

Residents of Adrian, Michigan, join family members and advocates demand the release of aging and medically vulnerable people on December 11, 2020.

COURTESY OF VICTORIA LAW

“They were worried,” Shawanna Vaughn, the rally organizer and director of Silent Cry, a nonprofit addressing the traumas of incarceration, told Truthout. “They thought that if people inside are infected, then they’ll be infected too. I explained that if incarcerated people get COVID, it comes from the staff so their community is already at risk.”

At the rally, advocates also learned that the men who had spoken out about COVID conditions had been placed in solitary confinement, a punitive form of isolation. After the rally, Vaughn spoke with others inside the prison. “They were excited,” she told Truthout. “Even though that [retaliation] is happening, nothing [advocacy-wise] was happening before.”

Now, she said, “People are asking, ‘What do we do now? Where do we go from here?’” Quoting Assata Shakur, she added, “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

That’s not the mood among the women at Rockville. “The prison has essentially thrown up their hands and walked away from the problem for the moment,” said Pender. “I am sure that they are working on a better solution (at least, we hope so), but in the meantime, we see our neighbor get sick and we start worrying. Then they test positive, and we literally become trapped in the room with them. It’s like something out of a horror movie. In the beginning, I used to flippantly say that when the COVID finally comes here, the prison will just let us all get sick and die. I thought that I was just being dramatic, but it might have been more prescient than I know.”

Donald Trump Trying To Incite ‘White Nationalist Riot’ In D.C. The Day Election Results Certified, Pundit Says

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGESUS POLITICS

Nathan Francis
December 27, 2020

On Sunday, Trump sent a tweet telling people he would see them on the day that Congress will formally count votes from the Electoral College and officially make Joe Biden the winner of the race.

“See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow!” Trump tweeted.

Political commentator and columnist David Frum said that with the coronavirus relief bill signed after a delay from the president, he appears to have shifted his attention to inciting violence in the nation’s capital in the coming days.

“Now Trump can focus like a laser on his top priority, inciting a white nationalist riot in Washington on January 6,” Frum tweeted.

As the Washington Post reported, Trump has already been using his Twitter feed to foreshadow a “wild” protest set to take place in the nation’s capital on that day. The report noted that the organization Women for America First had requested a protest permit for the event, the same group that organized a “Stop the Steal” rally in D.C. last month that drew thousands and led to a number of violent clashes.

As The Inquisitr noted, some Trump supporters vandalized buildings in the evening hours after the official event had ended, including some who attacked a pair of historic African American churches. Video captured the group tearing down a “Black Lives Matter” banner from one of the churches and setting it on fire in the street.

Proud Boys and other white supremacists burn a Black Lives Matter sign from the Asbury United Methodist Church in D.C. while dousing it with lighter fluid to intensify the flames. This public act is intended to terrorize and send a message to Black people. pic.twitter.com/0YNsTDaVqF

— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) December 13, 2020

The Washington Post added that there is already support among groups on the far right for the event planned for next month.

“Conversations about the January gathering have taken off on chat forums used by far-right groups, including Gab, Parler and Telegram. The Proud Boys, members of armed right-wing groups, conspiracy theorists and white supremacists all have pledged to attend,” the report noted.

The organizing group said close to 5,000 people are expected to attend next month’s rally, which is tentatively slated for Freedom Plaza.

Trump has continued to insist that he was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election, saying the victory was stole from him through massive fraud. Though his campaign and allies have failed to overturn the results through a series of court cases, Trump is reportedly still trying to change the outcome and had raised the idea that Vice President Mike Pence may not allow Biden to be certified the winner when he oversees the vote tallying.

Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA

 Is A ‘Money Laundering Organization’ 

For Donors, Alleged Former Employee Says

JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGESUS POLITICS

Tyler MacDonald

An alleged former employee of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA called into the Majority Report podcast recently and claimed that the Donald Trump-supporting conservative organization has a covert purpose.

“It’s like a money laundering organization for Republican donors,” he said during a YouTube clip of the exchange posted on Saturday.

“Right, cause I don’t know if you know this but they’re a 501(c)(3) which you know means that they are technically a tax-exempt educational charity. Which is f*cking ridiculous.”



The caller continued to claim that TPUSA is “like a tax shelter” with a “little bit” of public relations focused on Kirk. Elsewhere, he said the primary purpose of the organization is to “give the appearance of progress” so that Kirk can tell his donors that they are effectively turning young people to the conservative ideology.

Mashable reporter Matt Binder told the caller that he is the second insider from Turning Point USA who has told him the same story.
 

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Sludge previously claimed that TPUSA “blurs the line” between its charity and pro-Trump political activities. As the publication noted, the Internal Revenue Code prohibits all section 501(c)(3) organizations from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign” on behalf of a candidate for public office, such as Trump. Notably, Kirk attacked various Democratic presidential candidates at an October 2019 TPUSA-sponsored conference, which the publication suggested was “pushing the boundaries of his organization’s charitable nonprofit status.”

Last year, a leaked memo from the fellow conservative youth organization Young America’s Foundation warned students to stay away from TPUSA due to the coalition’s purported lack of honesty, integrity, judgment, and experience. Former TPUSA employee Caleb Hull notably claimed that all of the information in the memo is true. In particular, he said that the organization regularly inflates its numbers to donors. Still, Hull argued that some of the group’s activists do quality work.

The organization’s dealings have come under scrutiny on multiple occasions. As reported by Sludge, the organization in 2017 accepted $50,000 from The GEO Group Foundation — the United State’s largest private prison company. The year following the donations, former TPUSA communications director Candace Owens said that she visited a GEO Group ICE transitional facility in Broward County, Florida, which she praised after her tour.

“This place is nicer than where I went to the public school system,” she said.

Sludge noted that Owens’ claims were made amid reports of immigrant abuse at the hands of ICE employees.