GRIFTERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Here’s how Jared Kushner’s ‘incompetence and insensitivity’ could bring down the Trump regime

IN CHARGE OF REDIRECTING PPE SUPPLIES TO PRIVATE SECTOR FOR PROFIT TO TRUMP INC.

May 23, 2020  By NJ.com



When I watch Jared Kushner speak on television, I am immediately reminded of Little Lord Fauntleroy – a person who is spoiled, conceited, and characterized by a pompous air of decadence, intellectualism, and moral superiority. Little Lord Fauntleroy was the major character in a novel of the same name by the British author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 1886.

As Washington Post columnist Max Boot points out, Kushner is the type of rich, privileged person who former University of Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboys football coach Barry Switzer described as “born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” His sense of unwarranted hubris was enhanced by his unmerited admission to Harvard.

Jared attended high school at The Frisch School in Paramus where he was a less than stellar student. A former official at the Frisch School told renowned journalist and author Daniel Goldman, “There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it; his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

Goldman’s research revealed the most plausible explanation for Jared’s unanticipated admission. He found that in 1998, not long before Jared was admitted, his father, Charles, a billionaire real estate developer pledged $2.5 million to Harvard.

Five years after Jared’s admission into Harvard, in 2004, Charlie Kushner pleaded guilty to tax violations, illegal campaign donations, and retaliating against a witness. It appeared that any political aspirations that Charlie and Jared Kushner, father and son may have had were hopeless.

But through marriage to Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump, Jared was able to effectuate one of the most meteoric personal rises in the history of American politics. Boot, a conservative intellectual, says as a real estate developer Kushner “was primarily known for overpaying for an office building located at 666 Fifth Avenue and for buying and destroying the spunky New York Observer. He arrived at the White House with no obvious qualifications and so many conflicts of interest that he did not qualify for a security clearance until Trump overrode the concerns of career professionals.”

The Trumps are America’s Romanovs, and regarding political matters, Kushner is the Rasputin of the Trump White House. Little Lord Fauntleroy Kushner has morphed into Rasputin Kushner – and Rasputin Kushner is much more dangerous.

Jared’s incompetence and insensitivity on political and governmental matters should not have surprised anybody, given his total lack of any political or governmental experience prior to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency. The American electorate is well aware of the appalling degree of influence the politically inept Kushner has gained as special assistant to the president.

During just the past month, America experienced three episodes of Kushner’s incompetence. The first was the total failure of his task force in procuring testing equipment. The second was his description of the Trump response to the pandemic and economic meltdown as an administration “success story.” The third was his refusal to rule out the possibility of the Trump administration changing the election date after being asked about it twice.
“Kushner’s statement reveals amazing ignorance of the Constitution and law,” tweeted Bill Kristol, the neoconservative political commentator and editor at large of the Bulwark. “It reveals startling arrogance in taking for granted he gets to have some say about when the election is held. It also reveals an utter lack of understanding of his very subordinate role in our democracy.”

This statement by Kristol, in a nutshell, explains why Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times stated that Kushner was incompetent and that he would not have had even a junior position in the Reagan administration.

Recently, the renowned Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty wrote a column about Jared Kushner’s incompetence, entitled “Save us all from Jared Kushner.”

I would suggest that this becomes a national prayer.

Alan Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

Spain’s far right hold car protest against Covid-19 lockdown




Published on May 23, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


Thousands of cars and motor-bikes honking horns and waving Spanish flags drove in procession through Madrid on Saturday as part of a nationwide protest called by the far-right Vox party against the country’s coronavirus lockdown.

Spain, which imposed one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns on March 14, has started to ease restrictions, but Madrid and Barcelona have remained in lockdown for longer because of more severe coronavirus outbreaks.

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The protesters called for Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias, of the centre-left Socialists and left-wing Podemos coalition, to resign over their handling of the coronavirus crisis, and, in particular, the lockdowns and the damage done to the economy and jobs.

“It is time to end the #stateofabuse that Pedro Sanchez and Pablo Iglesias are using to gag Spaniards,” Vox said in a statement, referring to a Twitter hash tag.

“It is time to make a big noise against the government of unemployment and misery that has abandoned our self-employed and workers.”

Vox leader Santiago Abascal, who was leading the procession in Madrid, made a speech that was broadcast on EsRadio so people could listen in their cars. He said the government was “directly responsible for the worst management of this crisis on the entire planet.”

Sanchez is due to make a speech later on Saturday that will be broadcast on television.

Protests against the lockdown started in Madrid’s wealthy Salamanca neighborhood last week, where people started banging pots and pans. But Saturday’s procession marked the first organized protest against the government since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Vox urged people to protest in every regional capital, and similar car processions took place in Seville and Barcelona, among others.

Madrid and Barcelona are preparing to ease their lockdowns from Monday as infections have slowed. This will allow outdoor dining and gatherings of up to 10 people.


Spain has registered 28,628 deaths from COVID-19 and 234,824 cases.

(REUTERS)

THIRD WORLD USA 

What happened in Michigan this week was no mistake: Infrastructure was privatized for profit — and it’s crumbling

TOLD YA SO


Published on May 23, 2020 By Sophia Tesfaye, Salon


President Trump spent another week feuding with a Democratic governor, this time as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer dealt with historic levels of rainfall which led to the collapse of a pair of privately-owned dams in the state. Instead of momentarily pausing his politics of petty revenge, Trump made matters worse, as is his wont.

The president diverted already strained resources for a campaign stop in Michigan that doubled as a political stunt, advertising his personal refusal to wear a mask, even in settings where everyone else is required to. Trump’s antagonistic rhetoric towards a state that is facing multiple life-or-death crises at the same time was widely criticized. But what he did more quietly did this week reveals just how vulnerable his deregulatory actions have left America.

In a move strikingly reminiscent of the Ukraine scandal, Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to threaten to withhold federal funding from Michigan, even as floodwaters from the two breached dams forced thousands of residents of the city of Midland to flee their homes. Trump apparent goal was to coerce Michigan officials not to send vote-by-mail applications to the state’s 7.7 million registered voters vote-by-mail. As usual, the president was unclear about exactly what funding he had in mind. Hours later he sent another tweet claiming that his administration had already activated military and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response teams but said Gov. Whitmer “must now ‘set you free’ to help.” Whitmer said at a news briefing on Tuesday that she had already contacted federal officials for help and activated the National Guard. Once again, nobody really knows what Trump was talking about.

Nevertheless, the salient point here is that the president of the United States, after witnessing the flooding of an entire region amid a major public health crisis rages on was to suggest, in public, that the government and people of Michigan owed him something in exchange for federal aid. Trump then traveled to a Ford plant in Michigan on Thursday and offered this explanation for the failure of the privately-owned dams: “Perhaps there was a mistake.”

Like many disasters, the beginnings of the Michigan dam failures are far removed in time from the actual even, but this event can hardly be described as a mistake. All indications are that this week’s historic flooding was caused by years of neglect and mismanagement of a public good that was co-opted for private profit. It doesn’t help that the headquarters of Dow Chemical, including a Superfund site with known cancer-causing chemicals, is directly downstream of all this floodwater.

The owner of the breached dams, Lee Mueller, who heads a company called Boyce Hydro, has been cited numerous times in recent years. State regulators had even revoked one of the company’s four dam operating license in 2018 over an inability to handle a major flood. At least two of Boyce Hydro’s dams were identified as being “high hazard,” meaning that according to the National Dam Safety Program and FEMA, loss of life would likely result if they failed or were incorrectly operated.

The potential failure of the Edenville Dam, wrote federal regulators, “would pose a very substantial risk to life and property, and Boyce has repeatedly failed to comply with the orders of the Regional Engineer and other Commission staff or to work with Commission staff to resolve these instances of noncompliance, notwithstanding being given many opportunities to do so.” The dam was flagged as unable to handle heavy rainfall as long ago as the 1990s. But Mueller, a Trump supporter who publicly backed the president against impeachment in a Reuters article last year, didn’t want to pay to repair them. After years of delay, Boyce Hydro finally agreed to sell the dams to a task force of residents from four neighboring counties who hoped to implement overdue repairs. This is yet another example of the wealthy privatizing their profits and socializing the losses.

The Army Corps of Engineers says more than half of the nation’s 91,458 dams are privately owned, and according to E&E News, a majority of them are more than 50 years old. Jokes about Trump’s always-impending and never-arriving “Infrastructure Week” have long gone stale, but it’s worth remembering that increased infrastructure spending, like the kind needed to upgrade the nation’s aging water infrastructure, was one of Trump’s biggest campaign promises.

“We have a great plan and we are going to rebuild our infrastructure,” Trump said on Fox Business Network in an August 2016 appearance. He further claimed that the numbers Hillary Clinton was proposing ($275 billion) was “a fraction of what we’re talking about, we need much more money than that to rebuild our infrastructure. Well, I would say at least double her numbers and you’re going to really need more than that. We have bridges that are falling down.”

After taking office with Republican control of both chambers of Congress, Trump increased his theoretical ask to $1 billion. While Trump did sign a 2018 water infrastructure bill, that legislation, which passed the Senate 99-1, was a bipartisan reauthorization of $6 billion in federal funding for state-level projects and must be renewed every two years. In contrast, Trump signed an executive order rolling back Obama-era environmental standards that required the federal government to account for climate change in infrastructure projects, and also directed agencies to loosen water regulations in California.

Like Trump, the owner of Boyce Hydro tried to blame environmental regulations as the cause of his negligence. The company complained that the state had threatened it with litigation because lower water levels were killing freshwater mussels. “The state agencies clearly care more about mussels living in the impoundment than they do about the people living downstream of the dams,” Mueller said in a statement.

But even as some Republicans are reportedly lobbying for Trump to revisit his pledge to invest in infrastructure — pandemic relief funding provides “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give a facelift to the country,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told CNN — the president awarded the largest federal building contract of his entire term in office this week. It was for his border wall. The Washington Post reports that the $1.3 billion deal to build just 42 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border was awarded to a company that has only one other border contract, and is currently under investigation by the Defense Department inspector general:

The company that won the contract, Fisher Sand and Gravel, has been repeatedly lauded by the president in White House meetings with border officials and military commanders, the result of a long and personalized marketing pitch to Trump and ardent supporters of his barrier project.

After its initial bids for border contracts were passed over, the company and its CEO, Tommy Fisher, cut a direct path to the president by praising him on cable news, donating to his Republican allies and cultivating ties to former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, GOP Senate candidate Kris Kobach and other conservative figures in Trump’s orbit.

This is what happens when conservatives decide to utilize an infrastructure budget to subsidize profitable businesses. It rained a lot in Michigan this week, but the private corporation in charge of the dam let this devastating flood happen as a direct result of its neglect and cost-cutting. And that’s without considering the downstream effects of the Dow Chemical plant, which is likely to make the danger and death from this flood much worse. Republicans, of course, will pretend to be mystified.

Betsy DeVos openly admits she’s ‘absolutely’ using the pandemic to impose her ‘faith-based schools’ agenda




Published on May 23, 2020 By Igor Derysh, Salon


Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos admitted that she was trying to use the ongoing coronavirus crisis to push through her private school choice agenda during a Tuesday radio interview.DeVos made the comments during an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, on his Sirius XM show. The interview was first flagged by the nonprofit education news outlet Chalkbeat.

Dolan asked the secretary whether she was trying to “utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to send them to faith-based schools.”

“Am I correct in understanding what your agenda is?” he asked.

“Yes, absolutely,” DeVos replied. “For more than three decades, that has been something that I’ve been passionate about. This whole pandemic has brought into clear focus that everyone has been impacted, and we shouldn’t be thinking about students that are in public schools versus private schools.”
Department of Education spokeswoman Angela Morabito said in a statement to Chalkbeat that DeVos “is helping Catholic schools just as she is helping all schools; this does not mean she is favoring any one type of school over another.”

“There is no question that this crisis has impacted all students — no matter what kind of school they’re enrolled in,” she added.

DeVos’ comments came as she defended her decision to redirect coronavirus relief funds away from public schools with high numbers of impoverished students to private schools which tend to serve wealthy students. Congress allocated about $13.5 billion to help schools, most of which was intended to go to schools based on a formula that determines how many poor children they serve.

The formula has long allocated some of the funding for poor children who attend private schools, The Washington Post reported. But DeVos said states should calculate how many total students private schools serve rather than just the number of poor students. As a result, millions in aid will be redirected away from schools with high poverty rates to private schools which may not have many poor students.
The move drew criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

“My sense was that the money should have been distributed in the same way we distribute Title I money,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Education Committee who is typically a DeVos ally, told reporters Wednesday. “I think that’s what most of Congress was expecting.”

Democrats also decried the decision.

“[The guidance] seeks to repurpose hundreds-of-millions of taxpayer dollars intended for public school students to provide services for private school students, in contravention of both the plain reading of the statute and the intent of Congress,” House Education Chairman Bobby Scott, D-Va., House Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLaura, D-Ct., and Senate Education ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a letter to DeVos on Tuesday.

“Given that the guidance contradicts the clear requirements of the CARES Act, it will cause confusion among states and local education agencies that will be uncertain of how to comply with both the department’s guidance and the plain language of the CARES Act,” the lawmakers urged, asking her to “immediately revise” the guidance.

But DeVos defended the decision Thursday to reporters.

“It’s our interpretation that [the funding] is meant literally for all students, and that includes students no matter where they’re learning,” she said.


The Democrats’ warning has proven right, however, as states are already dealing with confusion sparked by the policy.

The Education Law Center said DeVos’ policy was a “patent misreading” of the federal law and could redirect $800,000 in aid from Newark Public Schools in New Jersey to private school students. Tennessee’s education chief said she plans to follow DeVos’ guidance, but other school leaders argue that it is not legally binding and should be ignored.

Indiana’s schools chief Jennifer McCormick said that the state would ignore the guidance after consulting with the state’s attorney general.

“I will not play political agenda games with relief funds,” she said.

Scott told NPR that “there is rightfully pushback” on the decision.

“The actions of the Department of Education have left states and districts stuck between compliance with the law,” he said, “and adhering to ideologically motivated guidance.”

TOLD YA SO 

Russians thrilled with Trump plan to pull out of Open Skies Treaty — and plan to take advantage of it: report
Published on May 23, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Saturday, The Daily Beast reported that Russian media is thrilled by President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the Open Skies Treaty — and that the president’s international saber-rattling could lead to them withdrawing from a key anti-nuclear weapon treaty.

“In Russia, Trump’s commentary and the timing of the intended withdrawal from Open Skies were interpreted as a sign that the move is merely political, with no tangible repercussions for the Kremlin,” reported Julia Davis. “Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov mentioned that the Kremlin’s exchanges with Washington were taking place via the traditional and non-traditional channels, but described the Trump administration’s demands and ultimatums as ‘senseless’ and ‘categorically unacceptable.'”

Meanwhile, according to the report, “Russian state-owned radio station Vesti FM described Trump’s dangerous flailing on the international arena as his desire ‘to play with toy soldiers,'” and Health Ministry specialist Elena Malinnikova “said that Trump must really be taking the regimen of hydroxychloroquine, since it’s known to cause psychotic side effects” on Russia’s 60 Minutes.

Trump reportedly is also considering resuming nuclear weapons tests — and that could cause Russia to escalate their defiance of international law even further.

“Washington’s approach reportedly is rooted in the flawed assumption that renewed nuclear testing would prompt the Kremlin to pressure the Chinese into joining a trilateral agreement with the United States and Russia,” wrote Davis. “This concept was dismissed

US discussed holding first nuclear test in decades: report

AFP / MANDEL 

 Trump administration has repeatedly shaken up US defence policy

President Donald Trump's administration has discussed holding the first US nuclear test since 1992 as a potential warning to Russia and China, the Washington Post reported Friday.

Such a test would be a significant departure from US defense policy and dramatically up the ante for other nuclear-armed nations. One analyst told the newspaper that if it were to go ahead it would be seen as the "starting gun to an unprecedented nuclear arms race".

The report, citing one senior administration official and two former officials, all who spoke anonymously, said the discussion had taken place at a meeting on May 15.

It came after some US officials reportedly claimed that Russia and China were conducting their own low-yield tests. Moscow and Beijing have denied the claims, and the US has not offered evidence for them.

The senior administration official said that demonstrating Washington's ability to "rapid test" would be a useful negotiating tactic as the US seeks a trilateral agreement with Russia and China over nuclear weapons.

The meeting did not conclude with any agreement, and the sources were divided over whether discussions were still ongoing.

Nuclear non-proliferation activists were quick to condemn the idea.

"It would be the starting gun to an unprecedented nuclear arms race," Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told the Post.

He added that it would also likely "disrupt" negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, "who may no longer feel compelled to honor his moratorium on nuclear testing."

Beatrice Fihn of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the group that won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, warned a Trump nuclear test could "plunge us back into a new Cold War".

"It would also blow up any chance of avoiding a dangerous new nuclear arms race. It would complete the erosion of the global arms control framework," she said in a statement.

The Trump administration has repeatedly shaken up US defense policy.

The Washington Post report came one day after Trump announced that he plans to withdraw from the Open Skies treaty with Russia, which was designed to improve military transparency and confidence between the superpowers.

It is the third arms control pact Trump has abrogated since coming to office.

Russia has insisted it will abide by the 18-year-old agreement, which seeks to lower the risk of war by permitting each signatory country's military to conduct a certain number of surveillance flights over another member country each year on short notice.

European nations have also urged Trump to reconsider.

Facing re-election in November, Trump has also significantly hardened his rhetoric against China in recent weeks, repeatedly criticizing Beijing's handling of the coronavirus pandemic which first emerged there.

He has made repeated but vague threats of retaliation against the chief US economic rival, which has denied all his accusations.

Earlier this month Trump called for involving China in new arms control talks with Russia, telling his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin they need to avoid a "costly arms race".

It is not the first time Trump's defense policy has raised concerns the administration is elevating the risk of nuclear war.

In February the Pentagon announced it had deployed a submarine carrying a new long-range missile with a relatively small nuclear warhead, saying it was in response to Russian tests of similar weapons.

Critics worry that small nukes would be more likely to be used because they cause less damage, thereby lowering the threshold for nuclear conflict.

But the Pentagon says it is crucial to deterring rivals like Moscow who might assume that, with only large, massively destructive nuclear weapons in its arsenal, the US would not respond to another country's first use of a small, "tactical" nuclear bomb.

Top Venezuela court orders seizure of AT&T subsidiary assets

AFP / Federico PARRAThe DirecTV headquarters in Caracas on May 19, 2020. According to official figures, DirecTV accounted for 45 percent of the subscription TV market in Venezuela

Soldiers surrounded the Caracas headquarters of television provider DirecTV, owned by AT&T, on Friday after a ruling by Venezuela's highest court ordered the "immediate" seizure of the company's facilities and equipment.

The Supreme Court ordered the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) to "take possession" of all property and equipment used in the transmission of DirecTV's services -- which account for 45 percent of the subscription TV market in Venezuela according to official figures.

The court said the armed forces would help secure the assets.

Shortly after the judgment was announced, around twenty armed National Guard soldiers were guarding the entrance to the DirecTV Tower in southeast Caracas, AFP journalists confirmed.

The move comes a day after Texas-based AT&T announced it was ending DirecTV operations in Venezuela.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed President Nicolas Maduro for the development.

"Why can't Venezuelans watch Futbol Total? Because Nicolas Maduro drove DirecTV out. Protecting his cronies and their money is more important than allowing ten million citizens access to uncensored information," he tweeted Friday.

Futbol Total is a popular sports program about European and South American soccer teams, broadcast by DirecTV Sports for Latin America.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, recognized by some 60 nations as interim president, also blamed Maduro's government.

"Not only are they guilty of DirecTV leaving the country, they are now taking away equipment and threatening their former workers," Guaido tweeted.

AT&T explained that US sanctions banned the transmission of the private television news network Globovision and PDVSA TV, the channel of the Venezuelan state oil company.

The company said that the transmission of both channels was a condition imposed by the Maduro government in order to grant a pay TV licence in Venezuela.

Maduro, many of his top government allies and PDVSA are all subject to US sanctions.

The board of directors at the company that provides the DirecTV service in Venezuela, Galaxy Entertainment, have been barred from leaving the country.

The court instructed CONATEL to appoint a new board of directors in order to "guarantee the immediate re-establishment of services (and) the labor rights of all the employees."

Bolsonaro rocked by release of expletive-laced video

AFP/File / Sergio LIMA

The investigation could see Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro put on trial or even impeached


Brazilians got a shocking look Friday at an expletive-laced meeting between President Jair Bolsonaro and his cabinet when a Supreme Court judge released a video at the center of an investigation targeting the far-right leader.

The April 22 cabinet meeting is under scrutiny by prosecutors probing allegations by former justice minister Sergio Moro that Bolsonaro tried to interfere in federal police investigations.

But it could prove just as damaging to Bolsonaro's 18-month-old government for other sordid details it contains.

They include the president using profanity to insult governors, the education minister calling to throw Supreme Court justices in jail and the environment minister urging the government to legalize mining and farming in the Amazon rainforest while the world is distracted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The video came to light when Moro resigned two days after the meeting.

In a damaging final press conference, the then-justice minister, a popular anti-corruption crusader, accused Bolsonaro of "political interference" in the federal police.

Police are reportedly investigating multiple cases involving Bolsonaro and his inner circle, including allegations that his son Carlos, a Rio de Janeiro city councilor, oversaw a fake-news campaign to benefit his father.

Moro's allegations led a Supreme Court justice to order an investigation into whether Bolsonaro obstructed justice or committed other crimes.

The probe, which could see Bolsonaro tried or even impeached, comes as the president faces growing disapproval ratings and criticism over his downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 21,000 lives in Brazil.

- 'Another farce' -

In the video, Bolsonaro rails against what he calls a lack of information from the federal police, or PF.

"I can't be getting surprises in the news. Hell, the PF doesn't give me information," he says.

"I can't work like that. That's why I'm going to interfere, period. It's not a threat... it's the truth."

At another point, he says: "I've already tried to change our security people in Rio de Janeiro, officially, and I couldn't. That's finished now. I'm not going to wait for them to fuck my whole family, my friends, because I can't change someone in our security apparatus."

Anticipating the release of the video, the president had already sought to do damage control, saying he was talking about ensuring his family's security, not protecting anyone from investigation.

"Another farce just collapsed. There's not a second in the video where someone could suspect I interfered in the federal police," Bolsonaro said after its release.

- Profanity and insults -

Confined to their homes by the pandemic, Bolsonaro opponents held raucous protests after the video's release, banging pots and pans out their windows.

Excerpts of the video played non-stop on Brazilian TV.

In one, Bolsonaro slings swear words at the governors of two of Brazil's biggest states, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, for defying him by imposing stay-at-home orders to contain the coronavirus.

"That piece of shit of a governor in Sao Paulo, that pile of manure in Rio de Janeiro," he says.

"That's why I want... the population to be armed. That's what guarantees that some son of a bitch can't just show up and install a dictatorship here."

In another, Education Minister Abraham Weintraub attacks the Supreme Court for giving states the final say in the matter.

"If it were up to me, I'd throw all these criminals in jail, starting with the Supreme Court," he says.

In yet another, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles says, "Now that the media's only talking about COVID, we need to use this moment of calm to change all the regulations" preventing mining and farming on protected land in the Amazon.

Investigators removed material relating to foreign countries before the video's release. According to Brazilian media reports, that included insulting remarks about China, Brazil's top trading partner.

In another potentially explosive twist to the probe, opposition parties in Congress have asked investigators to seize Bolsonaro's cell phone and that of his son Carlos.

The Supreme Court judge overseeing the probe passed the request Friday to the attorney general, who must now decide on the request.

National Security Minister Augusto Heleno warned such a move would place Brazil's "national stability" at risk.

23MAY2020

Virus-hit Hertz declares bankruptcy in US and Canada

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File / JUSTIN SULLIVAN

Established in 1918 with only a dozen cars, the global car rental giant had survived the Great Depression and numerous American recessions-

Global car rental company Hertz became the latest economic casualty of the coronavirus pandemic Friday, filing for bankruptcy in the US and Canada after more than a century in business.
"The impact of COVID-19 on travel demand was sudden and dramatic, causing an abrupt decline in the Company's revenue and future bookings," Hertz said in a press release.

Hertz said it took "immediate action" to prioritize the health and safety of employees and customers and eliminate "all non-essential spending".

"However, uncertainty remains as to when revenue will return and when the used-car market will fully re-open for sales, which necessitated today's action," it said.

Its main international operating regions, including Europe, Australia and New Zealand, were not included in the US Chapter 11 filing.

Hertz had already cut 10,000 jobs in North America, or 26.3 percent of its global workforce, to save money after the coronavirus shutdowns paralyzed travel and crippled the economy.

Chapter 11 is a mechanism that allows a company that is no longer able to repay its debt to restructure itself without creditors.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Hertz held debts of roughly $19 billion, in addition to nearly 700,000 vehicles sitting idle because of the coronavirus.

"The financial reorganization will provide Hertz a path toward a more robust financial structure that best positions the Company for the future as it navigates what could be a prolonged travel and overall global economic recovery," the Hertz statement said.

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File / JUSTIN SULLIVAN

Hertz's main international operating regions, including Europe, Australia and New Zealand, were not included in the US Chapter 11 filing

Hertz' franchise sites, which are not owned by the company, are also not included in the Chapter 11 proceeding.

Established in 1918 with only a dozen cars, the global car rental giant had survived the Great Depression and numerous American recessions.

But in recent years the company has struggled with competition -- including Avis Budget and carpooling services such as Uber.

Hertz suffered a fourth consecutive annual net loss in 2019. But 2020 had started well with an increase in turnover of six percent in January and eight percent in February compared to the same months of last year.

The chapter 11 filing follows that of another well-known American business, retailer J. Crew, and illustrates the extent of the damage to the economy from the deadly disease.

More than 38 million people have applied for US unemployment benefits since the shutdown began in March.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell recently spoke of a likely 20 to 25 percent unemployment spike, after climbing to 14.7 percent in April.

More than 1.6 million people have been infected with the coronavirus in the US and the pandemic has killed over 96,000 people, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Jayapal warns US on pace to lose more lives to coronavirus than WWI

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) warned Thursday that the U.S. is on pace to lose more lives to the coronavirus than it lost during World War I

TRUMP CALLED HIMSELF A WARTIME PRESIDENT

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) warned Thursday that the U.S. is on pace to lose more lives to the coronavirus than it lost during World War I.

Jayapal told Hill.TV that it’s “challenging” for progressives to close in on a priority particularly during the coronavirus pandemic because “there is so much need.”

“People are grasping because we’re facing now going on 100,000 deaths,” she said.

The Washington lawmaker pointed out that the U.S.’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed the number of American fatalities during the Vietnam War, which lasted two decades. During the Vietnam War, about 58,220 Americans died, and the coronavirus has killed at least 93,863 in the U.S., as of Thursday afternoon.

“We will at this rate cross the number of American lives lost during World War I, so there is a lot of angst out there,” she said.

Approximately 116,516 Americans died during World War I, more than half of which were victims of the Spanish flu, a major pandemic of the 20th century.

The lawmaker said progressives need to be more “streamlined about what our asks are” and “more focused” in defining priorities. 

The coronavirus has infected more than 1.5 million people in the U.S. as of Thursday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University.