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US politics
‘Two visions of the US’: Trump and Biden offer contrasts on race, Covid and economy
The Democratic and Republican national conventions offered two radically different diagnoses of the problems confronting America More
In one of the worst cities for evictions in the US, North Charleston, South Carolina, state representative Marvin Pendarvis’s push for more tenant protections is personal.When he was just 12, his family was evicted from their North Charleston home and the memory still haunts him.“I can remember being served with an eviction notice,” Pendarvis said. “I can remember having our belongings put out on the street.”The 30-year-old Democrat has worked to improve renter protections since entering politics, but the issue has taken on new urgency because of the coronavirus pandemic, economic crisis and racial injustice protests.Housing advocates across the country are bracing for a surge in evictions after the expiration of federal programs to help the unemployed during the pandemic. The firm Stout Risius Ross predicted 185,000 evictions could be filed in South Carolina in the next four months. Those most at risk of eviction are low-income women of color.After Pendarvis was evicted in the early 2000s, he and his sisters moved frequently to live with different family members and friends.“It’s hard to be engaged in academics, it’s hard to be engaged in anything, when you know that all of your friends are going back home at the end of the day and you don’t know where you’re going yet,” Pendarvis said. “Sometimes you wish the school day would last as long as possible … just because you know that for those few hours, six, seven hours of the day, that you’ll be fed, you’ll be housed and you’ll feel safe and comfortable.”Pendarvis said after he spoke publicly about being evicted, a handful of politicians contacted him to share similar experiences.Ultimately though, South Carolina’s political class – like that of much of the US – is more representative of landlords than renters.That’s what I look at as my role: to try to bring awareness to people and show them evictions are happeningThe state’s governor, Henry McMaster, is a landlord and has collected rent from his more than 200 tenants through the pandemic, according to the Post and Courier newspaper. It was the state supreme court, not its politicians, that passed a now-expired coronavirus eviction moratorium.“It’s just not gotten the attention it needs to address it in a meaningful way through politics,” Pendarvis said. “That’s what I look at as my role: to try to bring awareness to people and show them evictions are happening.”Pendarvis has been publicizing individual cases of eviction to local media, advising residents in his capacity as a practicing attorney and pushing legislation to address issues which disproportionately affect the city he represents.“I get a call every day – literally – a call or an email or a text or a Facebook message or a tweet from someone in my district, and even beyond my district, that is dealing with eviction,” Pendarvis said. “Or someone who has been laid off from their job and they’re looking at what to do with unemployment and what’s going to happen with that.”As a representative for a 41,000-person district, which is 51% Black, the racial injustice protests that have roiled America this summer further focused his efforts to fight for improvements to housing law, healthcare and food insecurity in the state.I came to the conclusion I’ve got to do morePendarvis participated in the protests and said they inspired him to re-evaluate his work. He also became a father for the first time in April and asked himself what he wanted to tell his son he was doing in the summer of 2020.“I came to the conclusion I’ve got to do more,” he said.This summer’s racial equality protests formed in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but it was the police killing of another Black man, Walter Scott, that catalyzed Pendarvis’s entry into public service.A few months after Pendarvis graduated law school, Scott was shot dead while running away from a police officer who had pulled him over for a traffic violation. Three months later, a white teenager killed nine black people in a church in downtown Charleston.“You had two really, really traumatic events that took place in our city that shook me and forced me to think about my role in addressing some of the issues that led to what happened,” Pendarvis said.He ran for city council, lost, and decided to try again in 2019. But a statehouse representative resigned in 2017 and Pendarvis successfully campaigned for the seat. He was re-elected in 2018 and decisively won the Democratic primary in June. He does not face a Republican challenger in November.Pendarvis thinks the US needs to do much more to be sure that after the virus is under control, citizens aren’t further burdened by lingering health disparities, unemployment and food insecurity.Pendarvis said: “My community is going to be decimated after this virus from an economic standpoint and even a health standpoint, and the question is how do we ensure they are able to recover properly?” More
Now disgraced, Jerry Falwell Jr once announced that Donald Trump was entitled to an extra two years on the job as “reparations” for a “failed coup”, meaning the Mueller investigation. Joe Biden has gone so far as to predict the president will try to steal the election.Trump and his backers openly speak of four terms in office. “If you really want to drive them crazy, say 12 more years,” the president cackles, despite express constitutional strictures to the contrary.Even as doubts surrounding its legitimacy grow, the election assumes ever greater significance. Michael Schmidt’s first book is aptly subtitled: “Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.”The Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter chronicles what he has seen from his “front-row seat”. It was Schmidt who broke news of Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email while secretary of state, and of James Comey authoring a memo that detailed the president ordering him to end the FBI investigation of Gen Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something elseSchmidt argues persuasively that the Trump presidency has highlighted the fragility of American democracy, and that Trump views the rule of law as something for others. More precisely, the president believes prison is meant for his political adversaries but not so much for his convicted cronies and for himself, never. Schmidt documents how Trump sought to prosecute Clinton and Comey: literally and seriously.A central premise of Donald Trump v the United States is that those who have sought to thwart the president have failed. Comey is no longer FBI director, Gen John Kelly is no longer White House chief of staff. Donald McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, is back in private practice.Trump usually gets what he wants. Jared Kushner, for example, holds a “top secret” security clearance despite persistent objections from senior White House staff and the intelligence community. After all others refused, Trump personally granted his son-in-law his clearance. Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something else. Over on Capitol Hill, according to Schmidt, Trump has “routinely outflanked the Democratic lawmakers investigating him”, while Republican leaders have emerged as “Trump’s public defenders”. Career civil servants, including those at the Food and Drug Administration, are “maligned” as part of a ‘Deep State’.” So what if a pandemic rages?Similarly, Trump targets journalists as “fake news” and as “enemies of the people”, a term popularized by Joseph Stalin. As one administration insider has said, it’s all a “bit” reminiscent of the “late” Weimar Republic.Schmidt frames his book as a four-act play, Comey and McGahn the central actors, a quote from King Lear as prelude. Chapters weave context with drama, even as they inform.The reader is continuously reminded of how many days remained before a particular event, such as “Donald Trump is sworn in as president”, “the appointment of special counsel Robert S Mueller III” or the “release of the Mueller Report”. It difficult to forget what came next. Donald Trump v the United States is laden with direct quotes and attribution. It is credible and intriguing. Beyond that, it is also unsettling.Schmidt details McGahn’s cooperation with the special counsel. Here, he recalls a conversation for the ages, with McGahn while he was still White House counsel and Mueller’s investigation was months away from its end.“You did a lot of damage to the president,” Schmidt tells McGahn, minutes before a thunderstorm over the White House. “I understand that. You understand that. But [Trump] doesn’t understand that.”McGahn replies: “I damaged the office of the president. I damaged the office.”Schmidt parries: “That’s not it. You damaged him, and he doesn’t understand that.”Ultimately, McGahn responds: “This is the last time we ever talk.”On cue, the rain begins to fall.Equally vivid are exchanges between Comey and his wife, Patrice, she of a keener sense of peril. As he moved toward announcing the FBI’s determination surrounding Clinton’s emails, in late June 2016, she presciently warned: “This is going to be bad for you.”According to Schmidt, Patrice Comey also pleaded, “You’re going to get shot … you’re going to get slammed.” Months later, her husband would tell the Senate judiciary committee it made him “mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election”.The book also clears up the mystery of what happened to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, which if concluded would likely have examined Trump’s broader ties with Moscow. One day it was there, the next day it had vanished.Specifically, the special counsel’s report addressed conspiracy and obstruction of justice but did not discuss related counterintelligence issues. Schmidt reveals that we can blame that on Rod Rosenstein, then deputy attorney general.According to Schmidt, in the hand-off of the FBI investigation to Mueller, in the aftermath of the firing of Comey, Rosenstein deliberately narrowed the special counsel’s remit. The deputy attorney general directed Mueller to concentrate on criminality. Whether Trump was a Russian agent was not on the special counsel’s plate.According to Schmidt, Rosenstein “had foreclosed any deeper inquiry before investigation even began”. This is the same Rosenstein who in spring 2017 suggested he secretly record the president, and that the cabinet consider removing him from office.“The president had bent Washington to his will,” Schmidt writes.The question now is whether the electorate follows. America goes to the polls in little more than nine weeks. More
The documentary film-maker Michael Moore has warned that Donald Trump appears to have such momentum in some battleground states that liberals risk a repeat of 2016 when so many wrote off Trump only to see him grab the White House.“Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,” he said.Moore, who was one of few political observers to predict Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, said that “enthusiasm for Trump is off the charts” in key areas compared with the Democratic party nominee, Joe Biden.“Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to pull this off?” Moore posted on Facebook late on Friday.Moore identified opinion polling in battleground states such as Minnesota and Michigan to make a case that the sitting president is running alongside or ahead of his rival.“The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states – but not Michigan. Sound familiar?” Moore wrote, presumably indicating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race when she made the error of avoiding some states that then swung to Trump.“I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much,” he later added.He continued to voters: “Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!”Moore cited CNN polling of registered voters this month to assert that “Biden and Trump were in a virtual tie”, including a poll that showed the pair tied at 47% in Minnesota. Moore said that Trump “has closed the gap to 4 points” in Michigan.A national CNN poll this month showed that Biden’s lead over Trump has narrowed nationally, 50% to 46%, while a survey from the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group found Biden and Trump statistically tied at 47% in Minnesota, and Trump narrowly leading Biden in Michigan. The margin of error for the poll, which surveyed 1,048 people, is 2.98%.Moore, a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders’s leftwing candidacy, warned in October 2016 that “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘f*** you’ ever recorded in human history – and it will feel good,” even as Clinton appeared to be sailing to victory.“Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump,” Moore warned at that time.Moore’s latest warnings come as Trump said at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday night that he supported seeing the first female president of the United States, but recommended his daughter over the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.“They’re all saying ‘we want Ivanka,’” Trump told his supporters. “I don’t blame them.” More
US politics
‘DemExit’: virtual convention aims to create US leftwing alternative
The Movement for a People’s Party believes Democrats and Republicans will always choose profits over people, and 12,000 have signed up to hear more More
Opinion
US elections 2020
The Guardian view on Trump’s convention speech: the unwitting truth amid lies
Editorial
The president’s address was an effective political spectacle, but said everything about what is wrong with him and the Republicans More
Democrat says: ‘All we needed was a competent president’
Hurricane Laura: at least four killed including 14-year-old girl
Trump to visit hurricane-damaged zone this weekend
Pence claims US would be unsafe under Biden in dark speech
Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake named
1,187 new coronavirus deaths and 44,877 new cases reported yesterday
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Kamala Harris launched a withering attack on Donald Trump’s leadership hours before he will accept his party’s re-nomination on Thursday, accusing the president of demonstrating a “reckless disregard” for the American people in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.Speaking from an auditorium at George Washington University, Harris, a California senator who last week became the first woman of color to accept the vice-presidential nomination of a major party, unfurled a wide-ranging offensive against Trump to address what she said was “a reality completely absent from this week’s Republican national convention”.“The Republican convention is designed for one purpose: to soothe Donald Trump’s ego, to make him feel good,” Harris said. “But here’s the thing: he’s the president of the United States, and it’s not supposed to be about him. It’s supposed to be about the health and the safety and the wellbeing of the American people.”“On that measure,” she continued, “Donald Trump has failed.”Harris , a former prosecutor, methodically detailed Trump’s response to the pandemic from his early praise of the Chinese government to his focus on the stock market.“He got it wrong from the beginning and then he got it wrong again and again and the consequences have been catastrophic,” she said.During their four-day convention, Republicans have made few references to the pandemic, even as the death toll rises to 180,000. Instead, they sought to portray the president as a superhero figure, whose strong leadership will “make America great again, again” as Vice-President Mike Pence vowed.Harris, who marched alongside Black Lives Matter protesters earlier this year, also opened her remarks on Thursday by addressing the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, by a white officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in an incident captured on camera. Attorneys say Blake is paralyzed and fighting for his life.“The shots fired at Mr Blake pierced the soul of our nation,” she said. “It’s sickening to watch. It’s all too familiar. And it must end.”Harris invoked Blake’s name, repeating the circumstances of his shooting for emphasis – “shot seven times, in the back”. She also spoke the names of other Black Americans killed this summer, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.While condemning violence that has transpired in Kenosha, Harris said Black Americans were “rightfully angry” and praised the Blake family, who she spoke with on Wednesday, for appealing for peace even as they seek justice.“It’s no wonder people are taking to the streets, and I support them,” she said, adding: “Make no mistake we will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice.”The Wisconsin governor, Tony Evers, increased the number of national guard troops in Kenosha after a white 17-year-old was charged on Wednesday with killing two protesters and injuring a third.Identifying the mounting crises – from the raging wildfires in California and the hurricane ripping across Louisiana, to the spate of police killings of Black Americans and a rising death toll from the coronavirus – Harris closed her speech by asking Americans to judge Trump on his performance.“We all know, he’s not changing. The president he has been is the president he will be,” she said. “But we have a chance to right these wrongs, and put America on a better path.” More
