A wave of reports expose Trumpworld corruption 

as the president’s allies point fingers

Published on October 31, 2020 By Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet- Commentary

Bill Barr and Donald Trump (AFP)

It’s been a long, difficult week in Trumpworld with all of the incriminating reports of corruption surrounding President Donald Trump and his administration. With Election Day less than five days away, Trump is likely feeling the pressure as the opposing forces work overtime to state their case and prove that he is unfit for the office of the presidency.

Many of the stories raise more questions about Trump’s leadership and the hidden agendas of his White House officials and other members of his administration.

Here’s a breakdown of the stories circulating this week:

1. Trump, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Turkish Bank 

A new report by the New York Times has uncovered details about Trump and U.S. Attorney Bill Barr questionable handling of possible violations of U.S. sanctions involving billions of dollars worth of gold and cash that was funneled to Iran.

When Geoffrey S. Berman, a top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, traveled to the White House to speak with Barr and some of his top administrative officials about the criminal investigation into the state-owned Turkish bank, Halkbank, Barr suggested that the bank be allowed to avoid indictment by paying only a fine and admitting that some wrong was done. Barr’s sentiments also echoed Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s words as he had reportedly asked Trump repeatedly to stop the investigation. Trump’s presumed eagerness to please Erdogan has also raised questions about where the president truly stands. For Berman, Barr’s request raised red flags and questions about whether or not Barr was colluding with foreign operatives.

“This is completely wrong,” Berman later told lawyers in the U.S. Department of Justice, according to people who received intel about the proposal and Barr’s reaction. “You don’t grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”

This report is yet another cloud over Trump and his administration regarding where their loyalty lies.

2. Pompeo Family Email Scandal 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was caught in the middle of an email scandal when it was revealed that he and his wife, Susan Pompeo had conducted official White House business using personal email addresses. Now, the couple is being investigated by both Congress and the State Department’s inspector generals for “potential misuse of government resources.” On multiple occasions, Susan Pompeo is said to have regularly utilized her personal email address for business matters, according to email correspondence.

“The emails show that Susan Pompeo routinely gives instructions to State Department officials from her personal email address about everything from travel plans and restaurant reservations to the elite Madison Dinners,” according to NBC News.

Below is an example of the types of messages Susan Pompeo sent to a State Department official. The message captures a conversation between her and a State Department official whose name was redacted from the record.

“The dryer isn’t hooked up… I think you told me someone was coming to fix that?” Susan Pompeo said via text message to a State Department official. “Ma’am – On it, I was told it was fixed. Let me get you an answer,” the official responded by email hours later.

3. Rick Perry’s Dirty Dealing 

A new report centers on former United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and his involvement in an attempted scheme to help some of his friends profit off a massive gas deal. Although Perry has denied the allegations, there are multiple details that highlight Perry’s ties to Ukraine, according to Pro Republica.

During a six-month investigation, reporters from Time magazine, WNYC and ProPublica discovered that “Perry and his staff at the Energy Department worked to advance energy deals that were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry’s friends and political donors.”

Two of these deals seemed set to benefit Energy Transfer, the Texas company on whose board Perry served immediately before and after his stint in Washington. The biggest was worth an estimated $20 billion, according to U.S. and Ukrainian energy executives involved in negotiating them.

4. Wilbur Ross’ Chinese Conflict of Interest 

Like Perry, Ross found himself at the center of controversy when he failed to separate from his business ties while serving as the U.S. Commerce Secretary. According to ForeignPolicy.com, documents appear to suggest that Ross’ potential conflicts of interest surrounding Chinese business are much more evident than previously thought.

Here is a breakdown of the conflicts surrounding Perry, his business ties, and government affiliation.

In Chinese corporate documents obtained by Foreign Policy, Ross is listed as serving on the board of a Chinese joint venture until January 2019—nearly two years into his term as commerce secretary. That joint venture, now called Huaneng Invesco WLR (Beijing) Investment Fund Management Co., is an investment partnership formed in September 2008 between Huaneng Capital Services, the U.S. management company Invesco, and a firm Ross founded, WL Ross & Co. Huaneng Capital Services is an arm of China Huaneng Group, a major state-owned power producer.

As Election Day approaches, more incriminating reports are circulating and raising more questions about the integrity of the Trump administration.

America’s crimes against humanity aren’t on the ballot this year — but they should be


Published on October 31, 2020
By Dave Masciotra, Salon- Commentary

US President Donald Trump, pictured on July 8, has assailed Britain's US ambassador as a "pompous fool" and slammed outgoing premier Theresa May's "foolish" policies following a leak of unflattering diplomatic cables. (AFP/File / NICHOLAS KAMM)

The 2020 presidential election is a life-and-death decision for thousands of people vulnerable to COVID-19, for a globe under the assault from the climate crisis, and for the future of American democracy. And yet for all the urgency, the political campaign still suffers under the weight and stench of bullshit.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt warns in his bestselling pamphlet “On Bullshit” that “bullshit” is more injurious than the blatant lie. One reason among many is that bullshit blurs the line between reality and fiction, offering a manipulative incorporation of truth to strengthen its own capacity to persuade. Absolute falsity, in contrast, is obvious to anyone with minimal awareness of the facts. When the Trump administration recently declared that one of its grand achievements was “ending the pandemic,” most people laughed in disbelief. This is a lie fit for consumption only from inhabitants of a collective similar to the Rev. Jim Jones’ notorious People’s Temple settlement in Guyana.




One of the most effective forms of bullshit in a political context is the smarmy euphemism. In his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell attributes the explosion of euphemism in political debate and journalism to the morally contemptible project of “defending the indefensible.” Bombing helpless villagers is not “murder,” to recall one of his illustrative examples, but “pacification.” Vague and bland language also serves the purpose of “naming things without calling up mental pictures of them.”

The late comedian George Carlin found the euphemism particularly prevalent and poisonous in the United States, arguing that “Americans have trouble facing the truth. So they invent kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it.”

The recent revelation that 545 children whom the Trump administration “separated” from their families may never reunite with their parents — because the government doesn’t even know where their parents are — provoked widespread condemnation from Democrats, including presidential nominee Joe Biden, and a stunning display of cold-bloodedness from Donald Trump. When Biden challenged him on the issue during the second presidential debate, Trump attempted to deflect from his cruelty by claiming that the detention facilities where the children were kept were “clean” and that the children were generally “well taken care of.”

Reality’s relationship of to Trump’s bloviation is typically uncooperative and disturbing, and the detention of immigrants and refugees is no exception. Thousands of them say they have endured abuse at the hands of ICE employees while in custody.

Biden deserves support and praise for his promise to form a task force to reunite the missing children with their families, pledging to sign an executive order to that effect on “day one” of his presidency. Election forecasters say that promise is popular with key constituencies in swing-state suburbia.

Regardless of what the polls indicate, the very existence of this “debate” in our national politics demonstrates the thorough extent of our own moral degradation. If a friend and I have a serious and sustained argument over whether or not we should knock an elderly woman to the ground and steal the money she has in her pocketbook after cashing her Social Security check, we have debased ourselves even if we decide not to do it.

In the case of the United States, we have not only discussed the moral offense, but committed it with systematic efficiency.

The word “separated” exposes the U.S. government as guilty of Orwell and Carlin’s accusation — hiding, denying and dodging the hideous truth. A more accurate word would be “abducted.” “Kidnapped” would also work.

Benjamin Ferencz, the last living Nuremburg prosecutor, rejected euphemism, and called the “family separation” policy a “crime against humanity.” A sane but naïve observer might have expect Ferencz’s charge to dominate the headlines, but it received little coverage from the mainstream press.

Furthermore, the mainstream press refuses to conduct the five minutes of research necessary to learn the criteria for calling a policy “genocidal.” It would be untrue to claim that the Trump administration is actively attempting to destroy Latin Americans or immigrants as a group, but in plain language, both the UN and the International Criminal Court list “forcibly transferring the children of a group to another group” as a policy of genocide.




Another genocidal policy, according to the same international bodies, is the imposition of “measures intended to prevent births within the group.” In September, a nurse who became a whistleblower, along with several victims, came forward to testify that medical staff at an ICE facility in Georgia performed unnecessary hysterectomies on many women. To her credit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacted by saying, “If true, this is a staggering abuse of human rights.”

That story did receive widespread coverage, but went unmentioned by any candidate or moderator during the presidential or vice presidential debates. Charges that our government has practiced genocidal policies have all but disappeared from political discussion, making room for analysis of Hunter Biden’s laptop, rapper Ice Cube’s meeting with Trump officials, and the incoherent ravings of Trump’s Twitter feed.

What does it say about a country that it can overlook policies that approach or resemble genocide? Or about a people who can learn that their government is creating orphans and routinely abusing the weak and vulnerable, and either react with boredom or make it fodder for a partisan political quarrel, as if that were morally similar to disputes over tax cuts or regulatory procedure?

The “staggering abuse of human rights” and “crimes against humanity” of the Trump administration should guarantee this president’s removal from office, and most likely his prosecution and imprisonment. Instead, they have fallen into the memory hole of a chaotic and intensely contested election campaign. Even when fully revealed, the extent of Trump’s barbarity toward children is not enough to defeat him at the polls.

One could make the same condemnation of American culture based upon the report that Trump’s slumlord son-in-law, Jared Kushner, convinced the White House to drop a national testing program because he believed the coronavirus would be most harmful to “blue states.” Setting aside the egregious political miscalculation, there are terms that aptly describe this behavior, which might range from “depraved indifference” to “murder.”

Despite the accumulation of damning evidence against the sociopaths in the federal government, there is no mass protest movement in the streets demanding their immediate resignation or prosecution. The absence of any popular response other than voting demonstrates that the problems in American political culture run deep, and cannot be solved in one election.

The only humane outcome to this election — the resounding victory of Biden over Trump, and Democrats winning a majority in the Senate — is critical in the larger effort of addressing American pathologies. But it is equally important, if not more so, that Americans start telling the truth: about our government, about our country and about ourselves.

No reckoning: History shows polite, liberal society will sanitize, ignore and absolve the crimes of the Trump administration


Published on November 1, 2020 By Tasnim Motala, Salon- Commentary

US President Donald Trump (right) alongside his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner during a meeting at the White House, February 23, 2017. (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb).

“If I’m asked to serve, I’ll serve,” the senior partner said coyly. We were at one of Washington, D.C.’s Michelin-starred restaurants, treated to a multi-course dinner as a thank-you to me and another associate for our hard work on a recent case. The other junior associate, who, like me, was a self-professed liberal woman in her late 20s, beamed at him. We both knew he was talking about a coveted position in the Trump administration’s Department of Justice. It was late spring of 2017. The administration had already imposed its “Muslim ban” and was beginning to gut protections for asylum seekers. Family separations would begin later that summer. No one asked him what “serving” in a Department of Justice led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions meant to him.

I think about that moment often. When I read that former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein purposefully pursued a policy of separating mothers from their infant children, or read about whatever fresh atrocities this administration has enacted, I picture the feigned humility of the partner. It was a smug kind of glee that I saw on his face that night, barely disguised, conjured up by the idea of having a role in the highest levels of government. He was a senior partner at one of the largest international law firms, where he easily made a few million dollars a year. This move was not about money. It was about prestige and power. It was a feather in his hat. It is that desire to amass accolades, at any cost, that underlies so much violence and harm in our world.

In “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” Hannah Arendt attributes Adolf Eichmann’s involvement in the Holocaust to a pedestrian careerism, devoid of the hatefulness that we attribute to Nazism. According to Arendt, Eichmann was haunted by the desire never to return to the humdrum life of a traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company that he once occupied before joining the German government. He sought to live a life of significance and consequence and make some sort of mark on history.

“And if he did not always like what he had to do (for example, dispatching people to their death by the trainload instead of forcing them to emigrate),” Arendt writes, “he never forgot what the alternative would have been…” The forgettable life of an inconsequential traveling salesman. Even though history would show that Arendt was mistaken in her assessment of Eichmann’s character, her message remains — evil has a varsity league, but much is done by amateurs.

This thirst for proximity to power is familiar to me. I think about so many of my law school classmates who would eagerly have lined up for a position to enact “lesser-evil” forms of violence against minority communities under a Hillary Clinton administration; they are now proud members of the “#Resistance,” declaring, “Black Lives Matter” and “Immigrants are welcome here.” Others, meanwhile, self-consciously adopted markers of conservatism, joining the Federalist Society and tailoring their extracurriculars to appeal to conservative judges, hoping to secure the right federal clerkships, the right high-ranking state government jobs, crafting the right narrative to make their eventual political ascent. And then there is me. Why didn’t I speak up or challenge that partner that night at dinner — ask him what role he planned to play working for Jeff Sessions?

Over the last few months, writers and journalists have weighed in about what sort of “reckoning” will await a possible post-Trump administration. Elie Mystal has suggested a truth and reconciliation commission, Mark Tushnet has proposed a nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry and Jill Lepore has argued that history will be the best judge of the Trump administration’s conduct.

But no commission, no matter how robust, can address the fact that polite, liberal society will sanitize, ignore and absolve the crimes of the Trump administration. We saw this with George W. Bush’s administration — the enablers and enactors of his war crimes and mass atrocities are sitting comfortably in law firms, on law school faculties and even in the current administration. Some even count themselves as part of the #Resistance.

The process of historical amnesia, revisionism and hypocrisy that will whitewash the Trump administration is already underway.



That former senior partner at my old firm recently left the DOJ in what was by all public accounts an amicable separation. During his time there, he actively defended policies that in any other country would be grounds for an inquiry from The Hague. And yet the doors to his old job remained open to him; I have been told that my former firm’s leadership hoped that when his stint at Justice ended, he would return to the firm. He is now a partner at another large law firm, where his “distinguished career” in government is celebrated. (Paradoxically, this firm is liberal-leaning — its website boasts of its robust pro-bono docket challenging the current administration’s immigration policies and voter suppression tactics). He is also engaged to the apparently liberal, junior associate who cried after Trump was elected in 2016 and beamed at the partner during that dinner in 2017. She also left the law firm and now appears on national television and other media outlets criticizing the corruption and misdeeds of the Trump administration. She, too, sees herself as part of the #Resistance, posting Black Lives Matter infographics and calls to action one day, and romantic pictures with her Trump-administration fiancé the next.

Elite lawyers like many of my classmates — with their liberal politesse — are not motivated by their supposed values, but by their ambition. For this reason, they will normalize and in fact celebrate anyone who rises to the highest levels of power. They will cheer on the private and government attorneys who raise the most inhumane arguments, mostly admiring the fact that they brought those arguments to the Supreme Court. They will line up to write opinion pieces in support of judges who will most certainly dismantle civil rights protections — if those judges happen to have employed them. Big law firms will welcome back with open arms the architects of some of the darkest policies in recent U.S. history, rewarding them with salaries many times larger than those of lawyers who choose to let their values guide them.

It is hard for me to imagine the sort of reckoning or even mending that this country needs (and has needed since its dark founding) when proximity to power, rather than any sort of grounding values, motivates elite circles in this country. The cognitive dissonance that we are already seeing among liberal society, which will condemn Trump on one hand and welcome his aiders and abettors with open arms on the other, leaves little hope for a bright new chapter once this administration leaves office.

Tasnim Motala is a civil and human rights attorney at the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University School of Law. Twitter: @tasnimmotala.

Uber’s Scare Tactics Have Made Vulnerable Gig Workers Worry Things Will Get Worse After Election Day

There is another vital vote taking place on Nov. 3 in California that could decide whether the gig economy can continue in the same format to which we’re all addicted.
Caroline O'Donovan BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 31, 2020

Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News

In July 2019, LaDonna Hamilton was driving four Uber passengers on a highway in Los Angeles when she was rear-ended. Her car was trapped between the truck that hit her and another one in front.

While Uber’s insurance covered the accident and her health insurance covered her hospital bills, Hamilton’s car was totaled. Her injuries required surgery, leaving her without any income for months while she recovered. “All that time I took off, I didn’t get compensation,” she said. “I had to borrow money from friends and family to live.”

Her first surgery happened in February, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic hit and California shut down. She’s been subsisting on unemployment payments ever since. She currently owes her landlord about $4,000.

Now, Hamilton is worried she could face yet another major upheaval after Election Day next week, when the gig economy faces an existential reckoning at the ballot box. California voters will determine whether the same type of low-paid side hustle — and fast, cheap service — to which Uber and Lyft have made us all addicted will continue to exist as we know it.

According to California law, gig workers should be treated as employees with the full benefits and protections that US labor law offers; but if Proposition 22 passes, they will remain independent contractors who must fend for themselves. Hamilton is conflicted about which outcome would better serve her. On the one hand, her accident and the pandemic have made her appreciative of the stability that a regular job might bring. But she also depends on being able to drive for Uber whenever she’s short on cash, and she’s afraid to lose those earnings if the company doesn’t get its way.

“I feel more dependent on them because I wouldn’t be able to go out and find another job right now,” she said. “If it wasn’t for Uber, I would be struggling really bad.”

While that law that made gig workers employees in California has been on the books for over a year, a coalition of companies, including Uber, Lyft, Postmates, and DoorDash, has chosen to focus its considerable energy and capital — spending over $200 million on Prop 22, more than any proposition campaign in state history — on finding a way to overturn it rather than comply.

If it wins, Proposition 22 would allow these companies to continue relying on independent contractor labor to deliver food and drive passengers on the cheap; if it fails, the companies will be required to hire the workers as employees, which puts them on the hook for payroll taxes, overtime pay, and a legal minimum wage. Either way, it could set a precedent for the rest of the country.
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For months now, the campaign for Prop 22 has been pushing the narrative that a win will save “hundreds of thousands of jobs,” while a loss could spell impending doom for gig workers.

Uber, in particular, has threatened that if the measure it paid for fails, it could be forced to upend its business model — raising prices, reducing the frequency of rides, and removing some drivers from the platform altogether.

Asked last week by the Wall Street Journal whether Uber would continue to operate in California — having retreated over unwanted regulations before — CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, “We are looking at all of our options.”


LaDonna Hamilton

That threat comes at a time when millions of Californians are out of work, with no sign of a renewed federal stimulus package in sight, and as state unemployment benefits, which became available earlier this year as the pandemic cratered the economy, are starting to dry up.

Meanwhile, with big events canceled, travel discouraged, and workplaces and businesses still shuttered, demand for ride-hailing services has remained relatively low — which means that as millions of Americans unable to find stable employment have flooded onto gig economy apps in search of work, the number of gigs to go around has shrunk.

The gig economy companies couldn’t have known that their big fight at the ballot box — which, according to current polls, is a relatively close race — would come at a time when a global pandemic and historic recession would leave their precarious workers even more vulnerable. But the influx of people desperate to earn quick cash could be playing to their advantage.

Gig work often acts as a substitute for the robust social safety net that the United States lacks. Many people who expect to be able to turn on an app and make deliveries when they need extra money are understandably nervous when they hear those gigs could be going away; that’s what makes Uber’s dire warnings about having to reduce its workforce so effective.

Using the threat of cutting jobs or lowering pay to score political points, said Robert Reich, former Clinton administration labor secretary and UC Berkeley public policy professor, is “completely inappropriate.”

“It exploits the fears that workers have during the pandemic,” he said. “Everybody is endangered right now, or they’ve lost their jobs already. This isn’t unique to Uber and Lyft drivers. But for Uber and Lyft to threaten that they will lose their jobs if this proposition doesn’t pass is particularly egregious.”

The campaign supporting Prop 22 said if it passes, drivers will gain new protections, like a minimum wage guarantee and partial compensation for benefits like healthcare. But if it fails, a spokesperson for the campaign warned, “80%–90% of app-based driver jobs would disappear, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

An Uber spokesperson said in a statement, "We'd be doing riders and drivers a disservice if we weren't honest and upfront about the consequences of forced employment.”

One of those precarious workers who’s worried about the consequences is Jeffrey Grant, a 54-year-old veteran and resident of Daly City. Grant said he’s applied for over 200 full-time jobs in his field, security contracting, in the last four years, and has received only two interviews. To cover his share of the $3,500-a-month apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Grant started driving for Uber in fall 2016. At first, he said, he made decent money. But over the years, his take-home earnings started to fall off. When the pandemic hit California in March, he stopped driving altogether.

The few times Grant bothered to turn the app on this year, he said, he was online for hours and only did a few short trips. “2020 was the worst,” he said. “I've seen consumer use just completely plummet.”

Grant has been able to collect some unemployment benefits — which were made available to gig workers during the pandemic even though gig companies don’t contribute to the fund via payroll taxes — but those payments recently got cut in half. With no other way to earn money, he’s worried things could get even worse if gig companies are forced to hire their drivers as employees.


Jeffrey Grant
“[People] think these companies are rich and wealthy and they're going to hire everybody,” Grant said, “and they simply can’t.”

He believes that if Prop 22 fails, Uber and Lyft will only be able to afford to hire around 15% of their current contractor workforce, leaving the other 85% high and dry. He also suspects that the companies will find workarounds to actually providing benefits like healthcare by limiting drivers to part-time schedules.

“State law says you have to work 31 or more hours to be eligible for employment benefits,” he said. “That’s a dirty trick these companies can play if they want to, and they'd be in full compliance with the laws.”

Grant doesn’t think Uber and Lyft pay drivers enough as it is, but he doesn’t think the employee model is viable. “There’s a huge amount of costs that’s going to come with this if the proposition fails,” he said.

Though Uber brings in billions of dollars in revenue a year — $2.24 billion in the second quarter of 2020 — the company is still not profitable. Food delivery companies have fared better during the pandemic: Instacart raised $200 million in venture capital this month, its third multimillion-dollar raise of the year, and it’s currently valued at $17.7 billion. DoorDash is valued at $16 billion and is said to have plans to go public within the year. Uber paid $2.65 billion to acquire food delivery app Postmates in July.

Many people, including Reich, disagree that the gig economy companies can’t figure out a business model that would allow them to treat their workers fairly. “They have enough money to do quite well; they don’t need to take that money away from their drivers,” he said. “They are mounting one of the most expensive public relations campaigns on any proposition in history. They certainly have enough money.”

Edan Alva, a former Uber and Lyft driver in Alameda, California, said that, despite the big valuations, the Yes on 22 campaign has some gig workers worried. “This is a tactic that’s meant to scare passengers and drivers, and it works in the sense that an uninformed person can easily say, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to lose my only source of income,’” he said. “There are plenty of people who are in that situation.”

Alva started driving for Lyft in 2014 to offset the cost of an hourlong commute from Alameda to San Jose, but when he lost that job two years ago, driving for Lyft became his primary source of income. He quickly realized how difficult it was to earn a living with the cost of maintenance, fuel, and taxes, not to mention unexpected costs like falling ill or getting into an accident.

Uber and Lyft attract people who are desperate for money, but it’s easy to get in over your head, said Alva, who eventually became an organizer with local labor group Gig Workers Rising. In the same way a payday lender charges people who need quick cash a high interest rate, he said Uber’s model “depends on desperation and exploitation.”


Edan Alva

Through a combination of unemployment checks, census work, and help from friends and family, Alva has been able to avoid driving for Uber during the pandemic, which he said has made the economics of gig work even starker. “The people who choose to work during the pandemic have, by definition, some significant degree of desperation,” he said.

Economists who’ve studied the gig economy say a significant percentage of participants turn to the apps when they’re experiencing a gap in their income. “They’re using it to make ends meet when they need extra money from week to week,” said Dmitri Koustas, an economist at the University of Chicago.

If the US had a stronger social safety net, the gig economy might not be as appealing. But in a time of economic crisis, when it’s unclear whether financial aid will continue to be available, what was once a side gig is now all some people have.

When people lost their jobs during the pandemic, “it was easy to start a delivery job if you wanted to earn money that way — but at the same time, it does highlight gaps in the safety net,” said Koustas. “If people were more inured against shocks and had stability in their main jobs, I don’t think there would be as much value for people to have these flexible jobs with low barriers to entry.”

If Prop 22 fails, Uber is likely to continue appealing labor regulation in the courts. A California judge came down against the company’s most recent appeal earlier this month, meaning if the ballot measure fails, gig companies would have 30 days from a final ruling to hire their workforce as employees. But that could take a few months while the companies continue their appeal at the California Supreme Court.

If the proposition t passes, it would be extraordinarily hard to undo. The language of the measure requires a supermajority — seven-eighths of the California legislature — to make any changes, making it “virtually permanent,” according to Bloomberg.

In other states, the companies would hope to use a win as a precedent to fight similar regulatory efforts that could crop up. In New York City, ride-hail companies were forced to cap the number of drivers on the platform and pay them a minimum rate per trip; while drivers there are still independent contractors, the industry is incentivized to avoid the creep of additional regulation in major markets.

Mike Wilson is a food delivery driver in Washington state who has kept a close eye on the fight over gig worker classification in California. Like a lot of people, he turned to gig work when the casino he worked at temporarily closed due to the pandemic and he lost his full-time job.

“There’s so much uncertainty — what’s going to happen with the election, or after? Are they going to have a stimulus package? Everybody’s really freaked out,” Wilson said. “I got into it for that same reason.”

He said anxiety over how far gig companies might go to avoid regulation has spread up the West Coast. “If they say something like, ‘We’re going to shut down in California,’ people freak out,” he said.

Wilson enjoys doing food deliveries, and at first said the bonuses and promotions made it relatively lucrative. But as the months passed and he earned less and less, he started to realize the shortcomings of the job.

“A lot of the time you spend out there is sitting and waiting for an order … and you don't get paid for that,” he said. “If you were an employee, you’d get paid for that time.”

He worries that those who prioritize earning quick cash over a stable job are being “shortsighted,” but as a dad of three daughters who’s scared to go back to the recently reopened casino and risk getting sick, he understands the pressure people are under.

“A lot of people don’t have any other way of making money,” he said. “This is their only way to make money, and those people are being exploited.”


Caroline O'Donovan is a senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Trump And Republican Senators Are Losing Votes Due To Coronavirus Deaths, A New Study Says

A new study has found that, in states with rising COVID-19 deaths, voter support for Trump and Republican senators has dropped by margins big enough to swing some tight races.

Dan VerganoBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 30, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. ET

Patrick Semansky / AP
An art installation near Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, DC, will include an estimated 240,000 white flags planted in remembrance of Americans who have died of COVID-19.

States with higher coronavirus death rates may see declining voter support for President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, possibly by margins large enough to swing tight election races, a new study has found.

Less than a week away from an election that many view as a referendum on the White House’s handling of the pandemic, coronavirus cases are now rising in nearly every US state, hospitalizations are spiking, and there are worrying signs that deaths are increasing again.

The new study, which polled hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country, found that when a state’s COVID-19 death rate doubled within a month’s time, Trump’s approval rating dropped by 0.5%, independent of all other factors. The decline in support, reported in the journal Science Advances on Friday, mirrored the effects that casualties of the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Iraq War had on past presidents’ approval ratings with voters.

Led by political scientist Christopher Warshaw of George Washington University, the researchers also asked whether people changed which candidates they were planning to vote for. Across states, every monthly doubling of coronavirus death rates caused a 0.37% drop in the number of people who said they planned to vote for Trump, the study found. The drop in support for Republican senators was even steeper, at 0.79%.

COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people in key swing states

Peter Aldhous / BuzzFeed News / Via New York Times
Charts show the cumulative COVID-19 death rate over time for each state. Key swing states differ in their total death rates and when the steepest rise took place.

These small margins could be big enough to shift close races. In 2016, the election result difference in swing states such as Michigan was just 0.23% — and some swing states in 2020, such as Iowa, appear to be just as tight. The new analysis found that the trend was particularly visible in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Florida, with the potential to sway both the presidential election and US Senate races.

Local unemployment usually plays a pivotal role in determining who wins votes in a presidential election, according to a study of economic impacts on races from 1969 to 2018 published in August on which Warshaw also was a coauthor. The new study suggests that COVID-19 deaths may play an equally important role.

“The president himself declared he was a ‘wartime president’ at the start of the pandemic, and we are seeing death tolls above the Vietnam War and Korean War, ones we have only seen in World War II,” Warshaw told BuzzFeed News. “Voters are seeing things that way too.”


While the president has repeatedly declared that the nation is “rounding the corner” and “learning to live with” the virus, nearly a quarter-million Americans have died in the coronavirus pandemic. As deaths and cases continue to rise, Trump has made the false claim that the numbers are wrong — driven by increases in testing and corrupt hospitals. Medical groups have roundly dismissed his allegations as false. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has declared that Trump was waving the “white flag of defeat” to the virus.


COVID-19 death rates for every state

Peter Aldhous / BuzzFeed News / Via Johns Hopkins University CSSE

The highest cumulative COVID-19 death rates are not in swing states, but rather in solidly Democratic states, including New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, plus Louisiana and Mississippi, where Trump is favored to win.

The new study relied on survey responses from more than 300,000 people nationwide taken from 2019 to 2020 by the DemocracyFund + UCLA Nationscape Survey, as well as fatality data collected by the New York Times, and American Community Survey county population data.

To estimate how COVID-19 deaths have impacted changing support for Trump and Republicans, the researchers analyzed changes in polls as mortality numbers grew while controlling for other effects, such as unemployment and protests. They first estimated statewide relationships by looking at changes in polls conducted between June 1 and July 2 of this year. They next drilled down to the county level in a week-by-week analysis.

Cornell University public opinion expert Douglas Kriner, who was not part of the study, told BuzzFeed News that the approach was methodologically sound and mirrored past studies on wartime casualty effects on voters.

“The effect sizes aren’t massive — but given the razor-thin margins in contemporary American electoral politics, even small effects could be pivotal,” said Kriner. “Moreover, given how polarized the electorate is, small effect sizes aren’t surprising.”

The effect of COVID-19 deaths seemed to sway Republican and independent voters more, according to the study authors, perhaps because Democratic voters had already made up their mind on Trump and the Republican Party.

“These findings are not at all surprising, but they do reflect a potentially important shift,” Shannon Monnat, a sociologist at Syracuse University who documented a move toward Trump in the 2016 election in counties most affected by drug overdose deaths, told BuzzFeed News. “As we have started to see outbreaks in many parts of rural America, people are finally coming to see that rural areas are not immune, and they have even less capacity to cope with it.”

COVID-19 is now disproportionately hitting rural areas that Trump and Republicans rely on for support. The worst virus outbreaks have shifted from cities to rural counties in the current surge of cases, overwhelming small hospitals, according to a New York Times report last week. And new weekly coronavirus deaths are now higher in counties that voted for Trump in 2016, compared to ones that went for Hillary Clinton, according to an Economic Innovation Group report released Thursday.

From a political science standpoint, Warshaw said, the Trump administration seems to have bet too many political chips on the economy, rather than on trying to limit the casualties of a deadly virus.


“The administration miscalculated that it would be possible to get the economy moving again without controlling the pandemic,” he said. “It seems pretty clear now that the best way to jump-start the economy would have been an early mask mandate, widespread testing, and other aggressive COVID mitigation measures in the spring.”

Trump and the Republican Senate probably should have passed more aggressive economic stimulus funding to support American families and businesses during an unprecedented economic downturn, Warshaw added.

He acknowledged that the election is still a week away and will ultimately be decided by the voters. But if Trump loses a close race, it’s possible that people will argue for a long time whether the pandemic was the deciding factor. In that case, Warshaw noted, Biden was leading Trump in nationwide polls at the start of the year, even before the pandemic started.

“That has stayed true for the whole race,” he said.

Peter Aldhous contributed reporting for this story.

Study: For 1st time, partisans' hate for political rivals tops affection for own party

Civil rights activists argue with supporters of President Donald Trump's, during demonstrations in Kenosha, Wis., on September 1. Trump visited Kenosha a week after police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, despite city leaders asking him not to come.

 File Photo by Alex Wroblewski/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Bitter political polarization in the United States has become so pronounced that hatred of the opposing party now outweighs affection for one's own party, researchers said in a new study Thursday.

The new analysis of data that dates back to the 1970s shows that disdain for an opposing party, or "out-party hate," for the first time has exceeded "warm" feelings American partisans have for their fellow party members, according to researchers at Northwestern University.

The authors of the study, published in the journal Science, determined that hatred of the opposing party is now "the dominant feeling in American politics" -- a phenomenon they have termed "political sectarianism."

Lead author Eli Finkel, a Northwestern professor of social psychology, said the political variety bears some resemblance to traditional religious sectarianism.

"The current state of political sectarianism produces prejudice, discrimination and cognitive distortion, undermining the ability of government to serve its core functions of representing the people and solving the nation's problems," Finkel said.

"Along the way, it makes people increasingly willing to support candidates who undermine democracy and to favor violence in support of their political goals."

Titled "Political Sectarianism in America," the study tapped experts in political science, psychology, sociology, economics, management and computational social science to examine three key elements of political sectarianism -- seeing the other side as different (othering), as dislikeable (aversion) and as immoral (moralization).
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Researchers pored over survey data going back 50 years to calculate the difference between Americans' warm feelings toward their fellow partisans and cold feelings toward political counterparts. They found that although warm feelings have remained consistent, cold feelings have risen to a point that, for the first time, exceeds the former.

"Things have gotten much more severe in the past decade, and there is no sign we've hit bottom," said co-author James Druckman, a Northwestern University political science professor.

The key to overcoming rising cold feelings, he said, is pointed out in the study -- realizing that actual differences between partisans are far smaller than they're perceived to be.

President Donald Trump's rhetoric and constant derision of all Democrats as extremist left-wing socialists is a good example of a major influence on erroneous perceptions of a vast political divide.

"As much as the parties differ from one another, partisans perceive even greater differences, believing, for example, that the other party is ideologically extreme, engaged and hostile," Druckman said. "Correcting these types of misperceptions could partially vitiate sectarianism."

In another example, the study's authors say Republicans estimate that nearly a third of Democrats are members of the LGBT community, when in reality the true figure is 6%. Likewise, Democrats guess that nearly 40% of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year, when just 2% actually do.

The study's authors lay some of the blame for the skewed political perceptions on the growth of partisan media -- which began during the 1980s when the Reagan administration terminated the Federal Communications Commission's "fairness doctrine," which called for news media to be fair and unbiased in their reporting.

International Space Station marks 20 years of humans on board



The International Space Station is photographed by Expedition 56 crew members from a Soyuz spacecraft after undocking on October 4, 2018. NASA astronauts Andrew Feustel and Ricky Arnold and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev executed a fly-around of the orbiting laboratory to take pictures of the space station before returning home after spending 197 days in space. Photo courtesy of NASA/Roscosmos

MORE PHOTOShttps://www.upi.com/Science_News/2020/10/30/International-Space-Station-marks-20-years-of-humans-on-board/5061603900446/

ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 30 (UPI) -- The 20th anniversary Saturday of humans living aboard the International Space Station spotlights the global cooperation and scientific discoveries that benefit all people, according to astronauts and others involved in missions there.

NASA and space agencies around the world are using the milestone to underscore achievements in space since the end of deep-space crewed missions in the 1970s and the space shuttle program in 2011.

Those who participated in space station construction find it hard to believe it has been inhabited for two decades, former astronaut Michael López-Alegría said. He has been to the orbiting platform three times and was the last person to visit before permanent missions started in 2000.

"After so many years, it's still in very good shape," López-Alegría said. "The ISS is the most audacious and complex construction project ever undertaken in space. It's pretty amazing that everything fit together perfectly and it all works so well."

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Without the space station, humanity may be lacking key knowledge about space radiation, microgravity effects on people and life-support systems for long-term space visits, López-Alegría said. And, he said, living in a relatively low Earth orbit is a crucial step toward missions to the moon and Mars.

"The space station is an integral part of space exploration," López-Alegría said. "We still haven't been able to build reliable life-support systems for a lengthy mission to Mars, such as carbon dioxide scrubbers to keep air breathable for long periods without replacements. The space station is the best place to test things like that."
During his missions to help build and command the space station, López-Alegría amassed 67 hours, 40 minutes on 10 spacewalks, a record for NASA surpassed only by Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev at 82 hours, 22 minutes during 16 spacewalks.

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Cooperation with Russia

NASA and Russia cooperated on the space station project after the two nations operated orbiting laboratories -- the U.S. SkyLab, occupied for just 24 weeks with gaps between three missions, and Russia's Space Station Mir, occupied with two short gaps for 12 1/2 years.

NASA has had hundreds of people supporting the ISS program at different times, said Robyn Gatens, the agency's acting director for the space station, including mission controllers in Houston and Moscow.

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The orbiting research complex, which spans the length of a football field, is equivalent to a five-bedroom home with a gym, two bathrooms and a 360-degree bay window -- the cupola -- that allows views of Earth. Large arrays of solar panels power its systems, while liquid propellant rocket engines keep it from losing altitude.

The space station, which cost more than $150 billion to build and costs NASA over $3 billion annually, flies at more than 250 miles above the Earth at over 17,000 mph.

More than 240 people from 19 nations have visited the space laboratory and living quarters, with over 100 nations sending research or educational projects.

Continuous presence

"It's an amazing accomplishment, just the continuous presence on a complex international platform like this," Gatens said. "That we've been able to make it look easy when it's not is a tremendous feat."

The biggest research accomplishments on the space station have been related to health, medicine and materials, she said.

"We've learned a lot about bone loss and immune system depression with astronauts on board," Gatens said. "We've used that knowledge to better understand osteoporosis on Earth, and how cancer cells behave."

A mission aboard the space station in 2004 proved that astronauts could use sophisticated ultrasound equipment in space.

Retired astronaut Leroy Chiao, commander of that mission, became the first person to vote in a U.S. presidential election from space. Astronaut Kate Rubins also cast her ballot from the space station Oct. 22.

Multiple studies

NASA also noted that the space station contributes to the study of the Earth's geology, oceans, farms and glaciers. Astronauts worked on improvements in growing vegetables in space, confirmation of beliefs about cosmic rays and a greater understanding of how fire behaves in space.

Recent research includes the construction of human tissue in microgravity, with a goal to build entire human organs.

The space station has provided many opportunities for dramatic, attention-getting spacewalks over the years. The longest one, by Jim Voss and Susan Helms at 8 hours, 56 minutes, took place as astronauts pieced it together in 2001. Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir conducted the first all-female spacewalk in October 2019.

Other highlights at the space station include astronaut Scott Kelly's year-long mission with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. They were launched March 27, 2015, and returned March 1, 2016. The lengthy stay was intended to allow study of Kelly's health during and after the mission to help prepare for deep-space exploration of the moon and eventually Mars.

By comparison, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley had one of the shortest missions to the platform this summer at 64 days during the SpaceX Crew Dragon demonstration flight.

Created in sections

Much of the space station was carried in sections from Florida by the space shuttle, which also ferried crews of five to seven people there on a regular basis. That meant more than a dozen people on board at times.

When the shuttle program ended in 2011, the smaller Russian Soyuz capsule -- launched from Russia's spaceport in Kazakhstan -- was the only way for people to reach the space station, two or three people at a time. But NASA plans to launch four astronauts to the space station in November aboard SpaceX's newly certified Dragon capsule.

The agency anticipates the space station will have a useful lifespan until 2030, although that date isn't necessarily firm, Gatens said.

"We've analyzed the life of the parts of the space station to 2028," she said "We're about to update that through 2032. ... So far, we don't see anything that is failing or wearing out."

Going forward, NASA wants private companies to build orbiting laboratories, living quarters or even space hotels.

Houston-based Axiom Space, for example, plans to launch a private module to attach to the space station by 2024. After that, Axiom wants to add more private modules, eventually separating them from the space station.

At some point, according to the space station's decommissioning plan, NASA will decide to repurpose parts of it or let it burn it up in the atmosphere and have any remaining chunks fall into the Pacific Ocean.

Climate change worsens effects of nutrient pollution on marine ecosystems


New research suggests global warming and overfishing are making worse the problem of nutrient overload in the ocean, which causes harmful algal blooms. Photo by Mapbox/Flickr

Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Nutrient overload caused by excess agricultural runoff can seriously harm coastal marine ecosystems, triggering algal blooms that emit toxins and rob marine life of oxygen.

Research published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science suggests the damage is magnified by other human activities, including overfishing and climate change.

For the new study, researchers reviewed dozens of papers on nutrient pollution, or eutrophication, revealing the complexity of the problem.

To slow and reverse the damage, authors of a new paper suggest a multifaceted approach absorbs the insights of a variety of experts and considers both land-use and ecology.

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"The threats posed by eutrophication include reduced water clarity, oxygen depletion, and toxic algal events that result in critical habitat losses such as coral reefs, seagrass meadows and mangrove forests," study author Thomas Malone said in a news release.

"Other serious consequences include mass mortalities of marine animals, loss of biodiversity and threats to human health," said Malone, a professor of ecology at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

In reviewing the literature on eutrophication, Malone and co-author Alice Newton, professor of marine science at the University of Algarve in Portugal, identified more than 700 dead zones, where algal blooms regularly deplete oxygen levels.

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Their mapping effort showed many problem areas overlap with many of the wonders of the ocean world, including the Great Barrier Reef.

Their analysis showed that while agricultural fertilizers account for the majority of the nutrient pollution that enters the ocean, human sewage, animal manure and fossil fuel combustion also contribute to the problem.

The new research showed that the problem of eutrophication is made worse by overfishing and other human-caused problems, including climate change. Warming temperatures are also partially responsible for increased river runoff, which helps carry larger amounts of nutrients into the ocean.

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As well, as human release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the ocean absorbs more and more CO2, increasing ocean acidity. Oxygen-deprived ocean layers amplify the problem of acidification, causing problems for calcifying organisms including shellfish, planktonic pteropods and corals.

Malone and Newtown suggest any comprehensive solution to the problem of eutrophication should consider the input of scientists, policy makers and the public.

While more sustainable agricultural practices and land-use changes can help reduce nutrient overload at its source, the researchers suggest ecosystem solutions, like restoring mangroves and marshes, can help prevent excess nutrients from reaching marine ecosystems.

"This valuable review shows the commonalities in the timing, causes and consequences of nutrient pollution of coastal waters in many otherwise very different regions of the world," said Donald Boesch, a professor of marine science at the University of Maryland.

"Our progress in reversing this important cause of ecosystem degradation will be limited unless we can reduce agricultural pollution through more effective regulations and incentives," said Boesch, who was not involved in the research.

'Intelligent' Chinese marine ranch combines 

high-tech fish farming, tourism


Genghai No 1, China's first ecological marine ranch platform, is anchored off the coast of Yantai, Shandong Province, on Thursday. Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Chinese industry and tourism officials are touting a recently opened "intelligent ecological marine ranch" as a potential game-changer for the country's depleted fishing waters.

Genghai No.1, a marine farm owned by the Shandong Ocean Harvest Corp., opened in July off the coast of Yantai in northeastern Shandong Province as a model of how modern, high-tech fishing techniques can be combined with tourism to revitalize and preserve the industry.

Marine ecosystems in most coastal areas of Shandong have been disrupted over the past 50 years by overfishing and the deterioration of coastal environments, endangering the fish resources.

But local and national leaders are now leading a push to transform the area's fishing economy with marine ranches. With nearly 1,000 square miles of ocean areas suitable for the construction of high-quality ocean ranches, Yantai has emerged as hotbed in the emerging technology, Chinese officials say.
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Marine ranching, first developed in the 1970s, is a type of aquaculture involving the cultivation of marine organisms for food and other products in an enclosed section of ocean.

The process involves placing artificial reefs on the seabed, releasing juvenile fish, and encouraging the growth of kelp forests. The ranches have also emerged as popular destinations for tourism and leisure fishing in China.

Backers have hailed Genghai No.1 as China's first large-scale "intelligent" ocean ranching platform, making use of artificial intelligence, clean energy, 5G communications, big data and underwater patrol robots.

With a total diameter of 260 feet and a water volume equivalent to 14 swimming pools, the ranch is composed of three identical and rotating sub-cages and is equipped with an automatic system for environmental monitoring and ship collision prevention.

It is expected to produce 330,000 pounds of fish and receive 50,000 tourists annually.

Humans have been cremating the dead since at least 7,000 B.C.
By
Brooks Hays
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The burned bone fragments showed cremated remains found at a pit belonged to a young adult who had been injured by a flint projectile several months before dying. Photo by Mission Beisamoun

Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Cremation is a truly ancient practice, with a study published this week in the journal PLOS One showing that humans have been turning the dead to ashes for at least 9,000 years.

An international team of researchers led by Fanny Bocquentin, an archaeologist and anthropologist with the French National Center for Scientific Research, uncovered evidence of direct cremation at a Neolithic dig site in Beisamoun, Israel.

The researchers said it didn't take long after breaking the earth to realize they'd happened upon something special.

"Thanks to the presence of well-trained anthropologists doing fieldwork on the site, the burnt human bones were immediately identified and all attention was focused on digging this exceptional pit," Bocquentin told UPI in an email.

"We realized during the excavation that this was indeed a cremation pyre pit," she said.

The team of scientists used an advanced imaging technique, infrared spectrometry, to determine the composition of the pit and identify the combustion temperature.

The excavation revealed 355 bone fragments. According to the spectral analysis, temperatures in the pyre pit reached 700 degrees Celsius. The size and condition of the bone fragments suggest the remains belonged a young adult who was injured by a flint projectile several months before their death.

The positioning of the bones suggest the body was positioned in a sitting position and remained so throughout the cremation process.

By the 7th millennia B.C., the people of the Levant were practicing agriculture and herding, but they were still hunting for sustenance. Archaeological evidence suggests the region's communities during this time were more isolated than their ancestors, but some degree of interaction persisted.

"For instance, the obsidian found at Beisamoun was imported from Capadoccia, some 1,000 kilometers away," Bocquentin said.
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For now, Beisamoun is unique, but researchers have previously found evidence of bone-drying, the step taken prior to cremation, at another site in Jordan. Researchers have also unearthed similar pyre pits dated to 6,500 B.C. at a Syrian dig site.

"These cannot be coincidences, there must be contacts between these populations," Bocquentin said.

Researchers suggest the Bocquentin discovery is evidence of a transition in how humans in the Levant treated the dead.

"In the periods prior to our discovery, funeral practices are often spread out over time, the deceased is buried, waited to decompose and then the grave is reopened, the bones are reorganized, the skull is removed, sometimes a face is plastered with lime on the dry skull, then the skull is re-buried in another grave with other people," Bocquentin said.

The burial process was labor intensive and time consuming. Cremation provided a way to expedite the decomposition process. Additionally, with the advent of cremation, bodies are no longer relocated after decomposition.

"There is therefore a contraction of the time of the funeral which could reveal a new relationship of the living with their dead, [and] of the living with mourning, too," Bocquentin said. "I would bet that it is an efficient way to reduce the power of the ancestors probably to the benefit of other beliefs."

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