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      Are US corporations really taking a stand for voting rights?

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      Despite a wave of public statements by corporations opposing legislation that would make it harder for people to vote, election reform advocates doubt American capitalism is really coming to the rescue of American democracy.Activists are welcoming corporate involvement in the fight against bills introduced by Republicans in state legislatures across the US to erect barriers to voting that disproportionately affect people of color and other groups that often vote Democratic.Hundreds of companies and business leaders lent their names this week to a two-page ad declaring “we must ensure the right to vote for all of us”, published in the country’s biggest papers.But past corporate interventions in social justice campaigns, including statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, did not go far beyond words, activists say.The pursuit of lower taxes and lax regulations, meanwhile, has led corporations to continuously finance the Republican party’s most corrosive projects, from voter suppression to the takeover of the judiciary to the big election lie that led to the sacking of the Capitol in January, they say.“Of course we welcome corporate support against outrageous voter suppression efforts by GOP state legislatures that make it harder for voters, particularly from communities of color and other historically marginalized communities, to vote,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way.It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers“That reaction is no doubt driven by their fears of losing business from their customers in the midst of heated public anger over such aggressive and targeted voter suppression, and we hope they will put their money where their mouth is and take real action to stop such proposals.”Thenewspaper ad was organized by two African American business leaders – Kenneth Frazier, chief executive of Merck, and Kenneth Chenault, former head of American Express – who have said such bills are racially discriminatory, even as Republicans insist election security is their deepest concern.The corporate decision to speak out created a rare moment of discombobulation for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who warned chief executives to “stay out of politics” before clarifying a day later, with no hint of self-consciousness: “I’m not talking about political contributions.”But the surface friction between McConnell and his erstwhile patrons belies the mildness of most corporate criticism of anti-voter laws and obscures companies’ ambivalence when it comes to taking a stand on voting rights, activists said.Large Georgia-based companies including AT&T, Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola did not voice concerns last month about legislation to restrict voting in the state until they came under public pressure. Their eventual statements were measured.“We are working together with other businesses through groups like the Business Roundtable to support efforts to enhance every person’s ability to vote,” said AT&T’s chief executive, John Stankey. “In this way, the right knowledge and expertise can be applied to make a difference on this fundamental and critical issue.”The same three companies declined to sign the ad published in the New York Times and Washington Post last week, referring media to their statements about Georgia, though similar high-profile clashes are playing out in Michigan, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere.Walmart declined to sign the ad, with its chief executive, Doug McMillon, who chairs the Business Roundtable, telling employees: “We are not in the business of partisan politics.”Walmart’s reticence was spotlighted by LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, co-founders of Black Voters Matter, in a statement that praised the newspaper ad as a “righteous decision to stand up to racism, disenfranchisement, and voter suppression” and criticized those who did not sign.“They – and all of these other companies – continue to issue misleading statements that create a false equivalency between securing elections and attacking voting rights,” Black Voters Matter said. “These corporations are pandering to a big lie that is being used to justify voter suppression. That’s partisan.”Michael Serazio, a professor of communications at Boston College, said corporations appeared to be taking a “proactive” approach on voting rights to protect their bottom lines.“It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers, before the boycott around the laws was going to kick off,” Serazio said.Corporations increasingly feel pressure from consumers and in some cases employees on social and political issues, Serazio said.“Without question, the broader trend over the last decade has been corporations responding to a perceived or real sense that consumers want them to take a stand on political issues that they wouldn’t have done before.”But corporations simultaneously shovel money into the coffers of the very politicians who engineer the policies the companies claim to detest.A report this month by Public Citizen, a government watchdog, found corporations had given more than $50m in campaign donations in recent years to legislators who advanced anti-voter laws and promoted Donald Trump’s big election lie.Josh Silver, director of Represent.us, a non-partisan elections reform group, said corporations have “an extraordinarily important role” to play in the struggle over voting rights and there was “cause for hope”.“But it’s also practical for them,” Silver said. “They have to choose whether to side with an increasingly authoritarian [Republican party], or the majority of their workers and their consumers.“This is not just altruism.” More

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      Trumpism lives on in new thinktank – but critics say it’s ‘just a grift’

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      Malcolm X, Mark Twain, Malcolm Gladwell. Lewis Carroll, Steve Jobs. Douglas Adams, Mohandas Gandhi, Rocky Balboa – all seem unlikely sources of inspiration for a definition of Trumpism.Yet these are among the prominent figures quoted by members of a new thinktank dedicated to resurrecting former US president Donald Trump’s populist-nationalist agenda.The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) describes itself as both “non-profit” and “non-partisan”. Critics, however, regard it as a cash cow for alumni of the Trump administration whose stained reputations make it hard to find gainful employment.Despite Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp”, the AFPI reportedly has a first-year budget of $20m, which it hopes to double to $40m next year, and plans to expand beyond its current headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to locations that include a spacious office on Washington’s Capitol Hill.The AFPI unveiled a website this week replete with images of the Stars and Stripes and Mount Rushmore. It profiles 35 team members with, in most cases, an inspirational quotation from a famous person.The board chair, Linda McMahon, for example, a former professional wrestling executive who led Trump’s Small Business Administration, attributes a line to the actor and comedian Lucille Ball: “If you want something done, give it to a busy woman to do it.”Pam Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general who defended Trump against impeachment, quotes the French fashion designer Coco Chanel: “Keep your heels, head and standards high.” Kaelan Dorr, who was senior adviser at the treasury department, dips into film fiction with the boxer Rocky, played by Sylvester Stallone: “Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up.”But vice-chair Larry Kudlow, former economic adviser to Trump, simply quotes himself: “Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.”Trump this week gave the organization his blessing, issuing a statement in praise of its “patriots” as “some of the greatest champions for freedom, free enterprise, national greatness, and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities, that our Nation has ever seen”.The former president said these “freedom warriors” have his full support “as they work not only to preserve the historic accomplishments of my Administration, but also to propel the America First Agenda into the future”.The team includes Rick Perry, former energy secretary, and John Ratcliffe, ex-director of national intelligence. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, will be informal advisers to the group, according to the Axios website.The AFPI’s president and chief executive is Brooke Rollins, whose past roles have included policy director for Perry when he was governor of Texas, head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) thinktank and Trump’s top domestic policy adviser.With priorities including criminal justice reform, government efficiency and education reform, Rollins oversaw a significant expansion and enhanced profile of the TPPF during her 15 years there, a formula she hopes to replicate at the new thinktank. Her successor as chief executive of the TPPF, Kevin Roberts, said: “She loves ideas. She loves policy.“She wants to be able to continue to promote the great successes that came from the Trump administration, many of them originating in states; that really makes sense when you think about what she was doing before she went to the White House. I think she’s going to be a forceful and classy voice of objection to some of the priorities of the Biden administration. She’s going to do an exceptional job in leading the group.”Roberts believes that Trump’s policy achievements on criminal justice reform, the US-Mexico border and the pre-pandemic economy are worth preserving, studying and developing. “I think bottling that up into a thinktank and asking questions from an academic point of view – how was it that we achieved that? – is really important,” he said.The AFPI is organized around 20 “policy centers”, such as homeland security and energy independence. A profile of the “Center for 1776” rails against “academic elites and demagogues” who are choosing to “embrace identity politics, division, and submission”. It appears to be picking up where Trump’s “1776 Commission”, a thinly disguised rightwing backlash against the New York Times’s 1619 Project, left off.But some observers found irony in the notion that a president who exhibited few ideological commitments – other than “owning the libs” and Republican orthodoxy on tax cuts for the rich – is now spawning a policy institute.Michael D’Antonio, an author and political commentator on CNN, said: “I guess I give them credit for exhibiting creativity. I didn’t expect that the level of gall would reach the point where they would actually create an institute devoted to policies that never existed in the first place.Many of these people are so disgraced that their options for gainful employment outside of this make-believe world of Trump policy are very limited“Trump is nothing if not energetically imaginative and this is a great way to suggest that there was something that never existed. Maybe they could at last develop Trump-related policies. So maybe now there’ll be a healthcare plan and it could come from this institute.”D’Antonio suggested that the AFPI will spend time attacking Joe Biden and is unlikely to impress political scholars. “I can’t imagine anyone outside of the Trumpian universe taking anything that they produce seriously,” he added. “It’s not exactly a team of policy superstars. Many of these people are so disgraced that their options for gainful employment outside of this make-believe world of Trump policy are very limited.”When a president leaves office, his former staff often slot into lucrative work on a corporate board or in the lobbying industry. Trump’s uniquely divisive leadership appears to have stigmatized former aides, although several – including Kudlow – have taken roles at Fox News, Fox Business or other conservative media. The AFPI offers another refuge.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, wondered: “How could anything having to do with Trump have the word ‘think’ in it? No. It’s all just a grift. It won’t be a thinktank. It’ll be a vehicle for people to give money to pay people who worked for Trump and can’t get hired elsewhere to keep Trump relevant.”As Trump resides at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, teasing another run for president in 2024, organizations have sprung up to carry on his legacy. They include the Conservative Partnership Institute, established by the former Republican senator Jim DeMint, and America First Legal, a legal group set up by the former White House policy adviser Stephen Miller.The AFPI will easily be the biggest and may help Trump maintain his grip on the Republican party, but will have to work hard to establish credibility in Washington’s already crowded hive of policy thinktanks.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, which traces its origins to 1916, said: “This is not the first research centre or joint venture to have been established to give a patina of intellectual respectability to Trumpism and it probably won’t be the last.“After all, there are a lot of unemployed Trump alumni and, to be fair, if you strip away all of the unacceptable personal stuff, all of the prejudice, you are still left with a handful of ideas that form the core of Trumpism, for better or for worse. It obviously represents a shift in the intellectual centre of gravity within the Republican party.”Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, added: “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that, in four years or eight years, we’ll look back on this flurry of intellectual activity in the Trumpist wing of the Republican party and say this is where the political eruption that Donald Trump represents was organised into something that the party could newly coalesce around.”The AFPI also includes Paula White-Cain, a Trump spiritual adviser and televangelist who will lead a “Center for American Values”. Her online profile quotes the African American poet Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” More

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      Indianapolis shooting: FBI questioned killer last year after ‘suicide by cop’ report

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      The former employee who shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis was interviewed by FBI agents last year, after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop”, the bureau has revealed. Coroners released the names of the victims late Friday, a little less than 24 hours after the latest mass shooting to rock the US. Four of them were members of Indianapolis’ Sikh community. The attack was another blow to the Asian American community, a month after six people of Asian descent were killed in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area.The shooter was identified as Brandon Scott Hole, 19, of Indianapolis, deputy police chief Craig McCartt told a news conference. Investigators searched a home in Indianapolis associated with Hole and seized evidence, including desktop computers and other electronic media, McCartt said.Hole began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility late Thursday, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself, McCartt said. He said he did not know if Hole owned the gun legally.McCartt said the killings took place in a matter of minutes, and that there were at least 100 people in the facility at the time. Many were changing shifts or were on their dinner break, he said.Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop”.He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology.A police report obtained by Associated Press shows that officers seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned.McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility. He said police have not yet uncovered a motive for the shooting.Indianapolis police chief, Randal Taylor, noted that a “significant” number of employees at the FedEx facility were members of the Sikh community, and a civil rights organization, the Sikh coalition, later issued a statement saying it was “sad to confirm” that at least four of those killed were community members.The coalition said in the statement that it expected authorities to “conduct a full investigation – including the possibility of bias as a factor”.Varun Nikore, executive director of the AAPI victory alliance, a national advocacy group for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said in a statement that the shootings marked “yet another senseless massacre that has become a daily occurrence in this country”.Nikore said that gun violence in the US “is reflective of all of the spineless politicians who are beholden to the gun lobby”.The Marion county coroner’s office identified the dead as Matthew R Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.“You deserved so much better than this,” a man who identified himself as the grandson of Johal tweeted Friday evening. Johal had planned to work a double shift Thursday so she could take Friday off, according to the grandson, who would not give his full name but identifies himself as “Komal” on his Twitter page. Johal later decided to grab her check and go home, and still had the check in her hand when police found her, Komal said.“(What) a harsh and cruel world we live in,” he added.Smith, the youngest of the victims, was last in contact with her family shortly before 11pm Thursday, family members said in social media posts late Friday. Dominique Troutman, Smith’s sister, waited hours at the Holiday Inn for an update on her sister. “Words can’t even explain how I feel. … I’m so hurt,” Troutman said in a Facebook post Friday night.Weisert had been working as a bag handler at FedEx for four years, his wife, Carol, told WISH-TV. The couple had been married nearly 50 years. More

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      in US Politics

      Roger Stone ‘funded lavish lifestyle’ despite owing $2m in taxes, US lawsuit says

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      The US Department of Justice has sued Roger Stone, saying the close ally of former president Donald Trump owes about $2m in unpaid federal income taxes, according to a court document. The civil lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida on Friday, alleged that Stone and his wife, Nydia, used a commercial entity to “shield their personal income from enforced collection and fund a lavish lifestyle despite owing nearly $2m in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties”.Stone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Stone, 68, is a long-time Republican political operative, known for his high-end wardrobe, outspoken comments and tattoo on his back of former president Richard Nixon. The self-styled “dirty trickster” faced fresh scrutiny after the attack on the US Capitol for his links with far-right groups, though he was not part of the insurrection.Stone advised Trump when the wealthy real estate developer toyed with running for president in 2000 and briefly worked on Trump’s successful 2016 campaign.He was indicted by Robert Mueller, the former special counsel tasked with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller’s investigation, which Trump called a “witch hunt”, led to criminal charges against dozens of people, including Trump associates such as political strategist Paul Manafort and former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.A federal jury in Washington convicted Stone on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. At trial, prosecutors said Stone told five different lies to lawmakers on the US House intelligence committee about his contacts with the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.Trump granted Stone a presidential pardon in December, wiping away the criminal conviction. Trump had previously commuted Stone’s sentence, which was condemned by Robert Mueller, allowing him to avoid a prison sentence. More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      White House to raise Trump-era refugee cap next month after backlash over broken pledge – live

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      Key events

      Show

      4.53pm EDT
      16:53

      White House to raise Trump-era refugee cap next month amid backlash

      2.31pm EDT
      14:31

      Democrats angry after Biden keeps Trump’s cap on refugee admissions

      1.00pm EDT
      13:00

      Today so far

      12.22pm EDT
      12:22

      Gun violence ‘pierces the very soul of our nation’, Biden says

      11.50am EDT
      11:50

      Harris meets with Japanese PM and addresses Indianapolis shooting

      11.23am EDT
      11:23

      White House is ‘horrified’ by Indianapolis shooting, Psaki says

      11.13am EDT
      11:13

      J&J vaccine pause to last for at least another week

      Live feed

      Show

      5.34pm EDT
      17:34

      During his press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister, Joe Biden re-emphasized his support of universal background checks and a new assault weapons ban after being asked about where gun violence prevention falls on his priority list.
      Biden touted his decades-long dedication to gun control and called the nation’s steady stream of gun violence a “national embarrassment.” He also called on Republicans in Congress to pass the gun control legislation that remains at a constant stalemate.
      “It’s not just the mass shootings. Every single day there are mass shootings in the United States if you count those who are killed in our cities and rural areas,” Biden said.

      5.12pm EDT
      17:12

      Hello, this is Abené Clayton reporting from the west coast. I’ll be taking over the blog for the next few hours.
      Joe Biden is holding a press conference alongside Yoshihide Suga, Prime Minister of Japan, to announce a new alliance between the two countries to help countries in the Indo-Pacific region recovery from the pandemic.
      Suga is the first head of state to visit the White House under Biden.
      Watch the press conference live here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/live/

      Updated
      at 5.51pm EDT

      5.04pm EDT
      17:04

      Afternoon summary

      The White House announced plans to lift a Trump-era cap on refugees after Democrats and activists forcefully denounced a decision to keep admissions at the same level. Biden had previously committed to significantly raising the cap. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the White House would release a “final, increased” number next month.
      Biden held his first in-person meeting with a foreign leader, Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga, underscoring Biden’s determination to counter China’s growing assertiveness. The leaders are expected to hold a joint press conference shortly.
      A founding member of the Oath Keepers has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal officials as part of their sprawling investigation into the 6 January attack.

      Updated
      at 5.06pm EDT

      4.53pm EDT
      16:53

      White House to raise Trump-era refugee cap next month amid backlash

      Press Secretary Jen Psaki is pushing back on criticism of Biden’s presidential determination that keeps the number of refugee admissions at the historically low level set by Trump, asserting that the directive has been the “subject of some confusion”.
      In a new statement issued after blowback from Democrats and refugees advocates, Psaki announced that the White House would set a “final, increased” cap in mid-May.

      The President’s directive today has been the subject of some confusion. Last week, he sent to Congress his budget for the fiscal year starting in October 2021, which honors his commitment. For the past few weeks, he has been consulting with his advisors to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and October 1. Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, his initial goal of 62,500 seems unlikely.
      While finalizing that determination, the President was urged to take immediate action to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions, to enable flights from those regions to begin within days; today’s order did that. With that done, we expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15.

      Updated
      at 4.55pm EDT

      4.36pm EDT
      16:36

      A government watchdog has reportedly determined that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated federal ethics rules when he and his wife asked state department employees to carry out scores of personal tasks for the couple.
      According to Politico, which obtained a copy of the report compiled by the state department’s inspector general’s office, government investigators uncovered more than 100 instances in which Mike or Susan Pompeo “asked State Department staffers to handle tasks of a personal nature, from booking salon appointments and private dinner reservations to picking up their dog and arranging tours for the Pompeos’ political allies. Employees told investigators that they viewed the requests from Susan Pompeo, who was not on the federal payroll, as being backed by the secretary.”
      Mike Pompeo reportedly defended the actions in an interview with investigators as the “types of things friends do for friends”. His lawyer, William Burck, assailed the report as a politically biased “compilation of picayune complaints cherry-picked by the drafters.”
      The inspector general’s office, however, defended the investigation, noting that many of the rules governing such interactions are clear, do not make exceptions for small tasks, and that the Pompeos’ requests ultimately added up to use a significant amount of the time of employees paid by taxpayers.
      Among the tasks the Pompeos asked staffers to carry out:

      buying a T-shirt for a friend
      arranging for flowers to be sent to friends recovering from sickness
      helping Susan Pompeo book hair salon appointments when she was in New York during the UN General Assembly
      and, in one instance, asking a senior adviser to the secretary and a senior Foreign Service officer to come in on a weekend “to envelope, address, and mail personal Christmas cards for the Pompeos,” the report states.

      Updated
      at 4.46pm EDT

      4.20pm EDT
      16:20

      As we await the joint press conference between Biden and Suga, here are some fun facts about the Japanese prime minister, courtesy of Takaaki Abe, deputy bureau chief of Nippon Television.

      According to a very vivid and thorough pool report, the 72-year-old prime minister is a paragon of health and wellness who was born in 1948 to a family of strawberry farmers in rural Akita Prefecture, in the northern part of Japan.
      Mr Suga has a black belt in Karate.
      He likes sweets, and doesn’t drink. Speaking of his eating habit, he lost about 30 pounds by going on a morning soup curry diet almost 10 years ago.
      Mr Suga was the chief cabinet secretary under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for almost 8 years from Dec 2012-Sep 2020, and became the longest-serving chief cabinet secretary in the country.
      He had a famous morning routine, waking up at 5am, doing 100 sit-ups, and going for a 40 min walk.
      His favorite book is “It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership” by Colin Powell and Tony Koltz which has become a bestseller in Japan after Mr Suga mentioned that he drew inspiration and guidance from it during his time as chief cabinet secretary.
      Mr Suga became Japan’s 99th Prime Minister on September 16th, 2020, succeeding Mr Shinzo Abe, who was the longest-serving prime minister in the country.
      Prime Minister Suga continues his morning walk routine.

      Updated
      at 4.47pm EDT

      4.09pm EDT
      16:09

      Democrats continue to slam Biden’s reversal on his pledge to raise the refugee admissions cap.
      “This Biden Administration refugee admissions target is unacceptable,” Senator Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the chamber. “These refugees can wait years for their chance and go through extensive vetting. Thirty-five thousand are ready. Facing the greatest refugee crisis in our time there is no reason to limit the number to 15,000. Say it ain’t so, President Joe.”
      Though the decision has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats, Stephen Miller, Trump’s former White House senior advisor and anti-immigrant crusader, suggested the move validated the Trump administration’s hardline approach as he gloated that it was a “significant promise broken for Biden.”

      Michelle Hackman
      (@MHackman)
      Tough day for Biden when his decision on refugees Angers a wide range of allies, from Democrats to religious leaders, and gives Stephen Miller a reason to gloat https://t.co/ivforfjkuB pic.twitter.com/WonqcsITyG

      April 16, 2021

      3.58pm EDT
      15:58

      A few minutes ago, Biden welcomed Prime Minister Suga in the State Dining Room. In their brief remarks, Biden noted that he was the “first foreign leader to visit me in my presidency.”
      “We are two important democracies in the Pacific region,” he added.
      Suga said he appreciated being the first foreign leader to meet with Biden, and offered his “condolences for the loss of the mass shooting in Indianapolis.”
      “The US-Japan relationship is a cornerstone for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and the world, and its importance is higher than ever,” he added.

      3.49pm EDT
      15:49

      The explicitly nativist appeal by members of Congress to establish a caucus based on respect for “Anglo Saxon” culture has rightly been condemned as racist and dangerous.
      But it’s also made some wonder what exactly the group’s founders envisioned when they called for a restoration of “Anglo Saxon” style architecture.

      b-boy bouiebaisse
      (@jbouie)
      all new buildings must respect our anglo-saxon heritage pic.twitter.com/D6fzVe7FPO

      April 16, 2021

      Astead
      (@AsteadWesley)
      u must RESPECT Anglo Saxon traditions and architecture pic.twitter.com/aIQ8lZ45dI

      April 16, 2021

      In all seriousness, the adoption of Trump’s “America First” slogan for their caucus name is an acknowledgement that a not insignificant part of the former president’s support was rooted in whiteness.

      Adam Serwer 🍝
      (@AdamSerwer)
      You can’t get much clearer than the repeated deployment of “anglo-saxon” here. https://t.co/fGh74Hokyk

      April 16, 2021

      As an aside, Trump was also fixated on architecture. He even signed an executive order stating that the “preferred architecture” style for new buildings should be classical, not brutalist.

      3.10pm EDT
      15:10

      Attorney General Merrick Garland has rescinded a Trump-era memo that curtailed the use of consent decrees, tools used by federal prosecutors in investigations of police departments.
      The Associated Press reports…

      Garland issued a new memorandum to all U.S. attorneys and other Justice Department leaders spelling out the new policies on civil agreements and consent decrees with state and local governments.
      The memo comes as the Justice Department shifts its priorities to focus more on civil rights issues, criminal justice overhauls and policing policies in the wake of nationwide protests over the death of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.
      In easing restrictions placed on the use of consent decrees, the Justice Department is making it easier for its prosecutors to use the tool to force changes at police departments and other government agencies with widespread abuse and misconduct.
      The memo in particular rescinds a previous memo issued by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions shortly before he resigned in November 2018.
      Democrats have long argued the ability of the Justice Department’s civil rights division to conduct sweeping probes of police departments had been curtailed under President Donald Trump. The so-called pattern or practice investigations examine whether systemic deficiencies contribute to misconduct or enable it to persist.
      “This memorandum makes clear that the Department will use all appropriate legal authorities to safeguard civil rights and protect the environment, consistent with longstanding Departmental practice and informed by the expertise of the Department’s career workforce,” Garland said.

      2.50pm EDT
      14:50

      Martin Pengelly

      Donald Trump, his family and supporters hoped their attacks on Hunter Biden would distract Joe Biden rather than convince people not to vote for him, the president’s son said in an interview on Friday, “whether it ended up in some horrible death, or whatever was their intention”.
      The author of the memoir Beautiful Things was speaking to the New Abnormal, a Daily Beast podcast. He discussed his struggles with addiction and attempts to find dirt to use against his father which resulted in Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
      Host Molly Jong-Fast asked: “Do you think they did it because they wanted you to kill yourself?”
      Biden said: “There literally is nothing more important to my dad than his family, and if they could, whether it ended up in some horrible death or whatever was their intention, I think they thought they would be able to distract my dad enough that he wouldn’t be able to focus on the campaign. And they had the exact opposite effect.”
      Jong-Fast also asked Biden about his dealings with energy companies in Ukraine and China, the subject of Trump’s attacks…

      2.31pm EDT
      14:31

      Democrats angry after Biden keeps Trump’s cap on refugee admissions

      Rounding up some reaction and analysis to Biden’s action today on refugee resettlement.
      The Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim notes that Biden’s pledge to raise the cap to 62,500 was already prorated for the 2021 fiscal year, which ends on 30 September.
      “An apples-to-apples comparison is that Biden pledged 125,000 refugees and decided to stick with 15,000,” she writes.

      Seung Min Kim
      (@seungminkim)
      One thing to remember is that the 62,500 refugee figure Biden pledged was already a prorated figure for a fiscal year that was half over. An apples-to-apples comparison is that Biden pledged 125,000 refugees and decided to stick with 15,000. Quite the stunning drop.

      April 16, 2021

      The administration’s determination has angered Democrats, who were particularly appalled by the Trump administration’s treatment of refugees to the United States.
      New Jersey senator Bob Menendez assailed the decision.
      “The White House has not only stymied the number of refugees permitted entrance into the United States,” he said, “but also it has prevented the Department of State from admitting vetted refugees currently waiting in the system who do not fit into the unprecedentedly narrow refugee categories designated by the Trump administration.”
      New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the decision “completely and utterly unacceptable”.

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
      (@AOC)
      Completely and utterly unacceptable. Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise.Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, incl the historically low + plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong.Keep your promise. https://t.co/A82xYf1XpR

      April 16, 2021

      The Washington representative Pramila Jayapal went for “simply unacceptable and unconscionable” and said Biden had chosen not to immediately repeal Trump’s “harmful, xenophobic, and racist refugee cap”.
      “President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity,” she added. “We cannot turn our back on refugees around the world, including hundreds of refugees who have already been cleared for resettlement, have sold their belongings, and are ready to board flights.”

      Updated
      at 3.36pm EDT More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump ramped up attacks on me to distract my father, Hunter Biden says

      by

      Donald Trump, his family and supporters hoped their attacks on Hunter Biden would distract Joe Biden rather than convince people not to vote for him, the president’s son said in an interview on Friday, “whether it ended up in some horrible death, or whatever was their intention”.Hunter Biden is the author of the memoir Beautiful Things. He was speaking to the New Abnormal, a Daily Beast podcast. He discussed his struggles with addiction and attempts to find dirt to use against his father which resulted in Donald Trump’s first impeachment.Host Molly Jong-Fast asked: “Do you think they did it because they wanted you to kill yourself?”Biden said: “There literally is nothing more important to my dad than his family, and if they could, whether it ended up in some horrible death or whatever was their intention, I think they thought they would be able to distract my dad enough that he wouldn’t be able to focus on the campaign. And they had the exact opposite effect.”Jong-Fast also asked Biden about his dealings with energy companies in Ukraine and China, the subject of Trump’s attacks.“Vadim Pozharskyi, the Burisma executive, thanked you in an email ‘for giving me the opportunity to meet your father and spend some time with him’. Did you in fact introduce the two, did they meet, and what was the purpose of the meeting?”“No,” Biden said. “100% not … [neither] my father or myself did anything that is wrong, that is unethical. As I said in so many times, I made a huge mistake in my calculation about how far they would go to smear my dad, by using me.”Jong-Fast asked: “In spring of 2017 you sent an email titled ‘expectations’, which involve China’s largest private energy company, and it discussed details of remuneration packages. And there was a line in the email that said ‘interesting for me and my family’ and then your pay was set at ‘850’. Do you remember this?”“I literally don’t know what you’re even referring to,” Biden said. “Is it from me?”“This email is sent by you,” said Jesse Cannon, Jong-Fast’s producer and co-host. “And it does refer to these things though.”“I don’t have it in front of me,” Biden said, “but I do know this. It’s that my dad was never involved in any of my business, period, 100% … But you know there’s an intelligence report from, from all of our intelligence agencies that has come to the conclusion that this was a Russian operation from the get-go.”US intelligence agencies have said Russia sought to stoke the Hunter Biden affair and hurt his father in the 2020 election. Biden’s book deals with his addiction to crack and alcohol and events including the death of his brother Beau Biden in 2015. It has not detonated problems for his father as many feared or expected. Jong-Fast told the Guardian she “knew the relapse story was something a lot of sober readers could relate to”.Returning to Trump’s failure to derail his father, Biden said: “Right around when I started to get sober and clean, I guess it was only then did I realize the level of their obsession, because I took long enough to look up from whatever drink or drug I was pursuing at the moment, and it seemed like every word out of the president’s mouth was some kind of demeaning or just horrible insult towards me.“I didn’t think that it could possibly grow and they just kept digging that hole, which was a dry hole, in my opinion, politically.”In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org More

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      in World Politics

      The Spread of Global Hate

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      One insidious way to torture the detainees at Guantanamo Bay was to blast music at them at all hours. The mixtape, which included everything from Metallica to the Meow Mix jingle, was intended to disorient the captives and impress upon them the futility of resistance. It worked: This soundtrack from hell did indeed break several inmates.

      For four years, Americans had to deal with a similar sonic blast, namely the “music” of President Donald Trump. His voice was everywhere: on TV and radio, screaming from the headlines of newspapers, pumped out nonstop on social media. MAGAmen and women danced to the repetitive beat of his lies and distortions. Everyone else experienced the nonstop assault of Trump’s instantly recognizable accent and intonations as nails on a blackboard. After the 2016 presidential election, psychologists observed a significant uptick in the fears Americans had about the future. One clinician even dubbed the phenomenon “Trump anxiety disorder.”

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      The volume of Trump’s assault on the senses has decreased considerably since January. Obviously, he no longer has the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to broadcast his views. The mainstream media no longer covers his every utterance. Most importantly, the major social media platforms have banned him. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Twitter suspended Trump permanently under its glorification of violence policy. Facebook made the same decision, though its oversight board is now revisiting the former president’s deplatforming.

      It’s not only Trump. The Proud Boys, QAnon, the militia movements: The social media footprint of the far right has decreased a great deal in 2021, with a parallel decline in the amount of misinformation available on the Web.

      And it’s not just a problem of misinformation and hate speech. According to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on domestic terrorism, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots and 91 fatalities since 2015, with the number of incidents rising in 2020 to a height unseen in a quarter of a century. A large number of the perpetrators are loners who have formed their beliefs from social media. As one counterterrorism official put it, “Social media has afforded absolutely everything that’s bad out there in the world the ability to come inside your home.”

      So, why did the tech giants provide Trump, his extremist followers and their global counterparts unlimited access to a growing audience over those four long years?

      Facebook Helps Trump

      In a new report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), Heidi Beirich and Wendy Via write: “For years, Trump violated the community standards of several platforms with relative impunity. Tech leaders had made the affirmative decision to allow exceptions for the politically powerful, usually with the excuse of ‘newsworthiness’ or under the guise of ‘political commentary’ that the public supposedly needed to see.”

      Even before Trump became president, Facebook was cutting him a break. In 2015, he was using the social media platform to promote a Muslim travel ban, which generated considerable controversy, particularly within Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports:

      “Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said.”

      But the company’s most prominent Republican, Vice-President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, persuaded Zuckerberg to change his position. In spring 2016, when Zuckerberg wanted to condemn Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, he was again persuaded to step back for fear of seeming too partisan.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Facebook went on to play a critical role in getting Trump elected. It wasn’t simply the Russian campaign to create fake accounts, fake messaging and even fake events using Facebook, or the theft of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica. More important was the role played by Facebook staff in helping Trump’s digital outreach team maximize its use of social media. The Trump campaign spent $70 million on Facebook ads and raised much of its $250 million in online fundraising through Facebook as well.

      Trump established a new paradigm through brute force and money. As he turned himself into clickbait, the social media giants applied the same “exceptionalism” to other rancid politicians. More ominously, the protection accorded politicians extended to extremists. According to an account of a discussion at a Twitter staff meeting, one employee explained that “on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda.”

      Of course, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, social media organizations decided that society could indeed accept the banning of politicians, at least when it came to some politicians in the United States.

      The Real Fake News

      In the Philippines, an extraordinary 97% of internet users had accounts with Facebookas of 2019, up from 40% in 2018 (by comparison, about 67% of Americans have Facebook accounts). Increasingly, Filipinos get their news from social media. That’s bad news for the mainstream media in the Philippines. And that’s particularly bad news for journalists like Maria Ressa, who runs an online news site called Rappler.

      At a press conference for the GPAHE report, Ressa described how the government of Rodrigo Duterte, with an assist from Facebook, has made her life a living hell. Like Trump, President Duterte came to power on a populist platform spread through Facebook. Because of her critical reporting on government affairs, Ressa felt the ire of the Duterte fan club, which generated half a million hate posts that, according to one study, consisted of 60% attacks on her credibility and 40% sexist and misogynist slurs. This onslaught created a bandwagon effect that equated journalists like her with criminals.

      This noxious equation on social media turned into a real case when the Philippine authorities arrested Ressa in 2019 and convicted her of the dubious charge of “cyberlibel.” She faces a sentence of as much as 100 years in prison.

      “Our dystopian present is your dystopian future,” she observed. What happened in the Philippines in that first year of Duterte became the reality in the United States under Trump. It was the same life cycle of hate in which misinformation is introduced in social media, then imported into the mainstream media and supported from the top down by opportunistic politicians.

      The Philippines faces another presidential election next year, and Duterte is barred from running again by term limits. Duterte’s daughter, who is currently the mayor of Davao City just like her father had been, tops the early polls, though she hasn’t thrown her hat in the ring and her father has declared that women shouldn’t run for president. This time around, however, Facebook disrupted the misinformation campaign tied to the Dutertes when it took down fake accounts coming from China that supported the daughter’s potential bid for the presidency.

      President Duterte was furious. “Facebook, listen to me,” he said. “We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us. Now, if government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country? What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you can’t help us?”

      Duterte had been led to believe, based on his previous experience, that Facebook was his lapdog. Other authoritarian regimes had come to expect the same treatment. In India, according to the GPAHE report, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party:

      “… was Facebook India’s biggest advertising spender in 2020. Ties between the company and the Indian government run even deeper, as the company has multiple commercial ties, including partnerships with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Women and the Board of Education. Both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have met personally with Modi, who is the most popular world leader on Facebook. Before Modi became prime minister, Zuckerberg even introduced his parents to him.”

      Facebook has also cozied up to the right-wing government in Poland, misinformation helped get Jair Bolsonaro elected in Brazil, and the platform served as a vehicle for the Islamophobic content that contributed to the rise of the far right in the Netherlands. But the decision to ban Trump has set in motion a backlash. In Poland, for instance, the Law and Justice Party has proposed a law to fine Facebook and others for removing content if it doesn’t break Polish law, and a journalist has attempted to establish a pro-government alternative to Facebook called Albicla.

      Back in the USA

      Similarly, in the United States, the far right have suddenly become a big booster of free speech now that social media platforms have begun to deplatform high-profile users like Trump and take down posts for their questionable veracity and hate content. In the second quarter of 2020 alone, Facebook removed 22.5 million posts.

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      Facebook has tried to get ahead of this story by establishing an oversight board that includes members like Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia University; Julie Owono, executive director at Internet Sans Frontiere; and Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation. Now, Facebook users can also petition the board to remove content.

      With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others now removing a lot of extremist content, the far right have migrated to other platforms, such as Gab, Telegram, and MeWe. They continue to spread conspiracy theories, anti-COVID vaccine misinformation and pro-Trump propaganda on these alternative platforms. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd awaits the second coming of Trump in the form of a new social media platform that he plans to launch in a couple of months to remobilize his followers.

      Even without such an alternative alt-right platform — Trumpbook? TrumpSpace? Trumper? — the life cycle of hate is still alive and well in the United States. Consider the “great replacement theory,” according to which immigrants and denizens of the non-white world are determined to “replace” white populations in Europe, America and elsewhere. Since its inception in France in 2010, this extremist conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media. It has been picked up by white nationalists and mass shooters. Now, in the second stage of the life cycle, it has landed in the mainstream media thanks to right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson, who recently opined, “The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

      Pressure is mounting on Fox to fire Carlson, though the network is resisting. Carlson and his supporters decry the campaign as yet another example of “cancel culture.” They insist on their First Amendment right to express unpopular opinions. But a privately-owned media company is under no obligation to air all views, and the definition of acceptability is constantly evolving.

      Also, a deplatformed Carlson would still be able to air his crank views on the street corner or in emails to his followers. No doubt when Trumpbook debuts at some point in the future, Carlson’s biggest fan will also give him a digital megaphone to spread lies and hate all around the world. These talking heads will continue talking no matter what. The challenge is to progressively shrink the size of their global platform.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Alarm is growing’: Michigan governor faces shutdown dilemma as Covid cases rise

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      The coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions that Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, enacted in March last year were among the nation’s toughest, and the governor’s leadership is thought to have saved lives. It also drew high marks from many in the state.The same approach proved effective last fall when the second wave hit. Now, as Michigan faces another surge of cases and hospitalizations, its worst yet, Whitmer has changed tack.Despite past success and growing calls for another lockdown from public health experts, and doctors managing hospitals with Covid patients, the governor is resisting further restrictions, and is instead largely relying on a vaccination rollout and a voluntary suspension of in-person dining services.Several factors are driving the new approach, experts say. Among them is a growing sense of pandemic fatigue, and sustained pressure from conservatives. Eroding support from independents and Whitmer’s looming 2022 re-election race have also played a role. Many of those bearing the economic brunt of her lockdowns are donors and influential business leaders, said Bill Ballenger, a Michigan political analyst, and the governor appears to have been “scared straight”.“I really do think the constant pressure over the last year is catching up, not just from the right and conservatives, but there are a growing number of people in the population, including independents and business persons who are Democrats, who are really angry at Whitmer,” Ballenger said.The pressure to remain open continues even as cases and hospitalizations rise, putting Whitmer in an exceedingly difficult position. The surge hit soon after she lifted restrictions in early March, and Michigan’s two-week per-capita caseload now leads the nation. The state reached a bleak mark on Tuesday when over 4,000 people were reported hospitalized – the highest daily total of the pandemic. A high number of cases from Covid variants is also fueling the surge.Among supporters strongly urging the governor to once again put restrictions in place are Dr Abdul El-Sayed, the former director of the Detroit health department. He noted that an increase in deaths has followed spikes in caseloads and hospitalizations, and said a new lockdown “would have a profound impact over the next couple weeks”.He said: “Governor Whitmer showed a tremendous level of leadership last spring and fall, and that came with a lot of political blowback from conservatives, but she did the right thing – evidence shows that she saved lives, and we need that leadership now.”Whitmer has largely pinned her hopes on the vaccine, but only 23% of the state is vaccinated, and it has been especially slow-moving in areas such as Detroit, where a high number of people with underlying conditions live. Whitmer has called on the federal government to send more vaccines.But that absence of a lockdown order has divided her supporters and administration. Last month, her former state health director, Robert Gordon, abruptly resigned over what many suspect was a disagreement with Whitmer over reopening the state as the new variant first spread.They also say it’s clear that the state’s vaccination plan is losing the race against the spread, and boosting the effort would not quell the surge quickly enough. It could take up to 57 days for the state to reach herd immunity, El-Sayed said.“It’s not a sensible approach and it’s not an evidence-based strategy, if you run the numbers,” he said. “It’s a convenient approach to call for something, but it doesn’t erase the need for a lockdown now.”That view was echoed by the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky. The Biden administration has so far declined to send Michigan additional vaccines as it sticks with its proportional distribution plan – another difficulty for Whitmer – but vaccinations alone may not be the answer to Michigan’s problems, said Walensky.“When you have an acute situation, an extraordinary number of cases like we have in Michigan, the answer is not necessarily to give vaccines,” Walensky said. “The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer and to shut things down, to flatten the curve, to decrease contact with one another, to test … to contact trace.”Still, the urgency and pressure from Whitmer’s allies has not persuaded the governor, who at a recent press conference said fresh lockdowns would be less effective because people are tired of the pandemic and the rules.“It’s less of a policy problem that we have and more of a compliance and variant issue that we are confronting,” she said. “State policy alone won’t change the tide.”That frustration partly explains why Whitmer’s latest polling numbers have slipped, Ballenger said, though in mid-March a majority still approved of her pandemic handling. He also partly attributed the erosion of support to the governor no longer having Donald Trump as “a foil”. Trump was highly unpopular with Michigan Democrats and independents, and Ballenger said he believes that Trump’s misogynistic attacks on Whitmer shored up her support.“She was able to sustain a lot of the popularity simply because she was not Donald Trump and Trump wasn’t popular in Michigan,” Ballenger said. “She said, ‘I’m the anti-Trump and Trump is doing a lousy job of handling pandemic’, and that worked.”Meanwhile, recent polls show her in a dead heat with the former secretary of state Candace Miller, a potential challenger in 2022. The governor’s fear of angering business donors “is part of it”, Ballenger said, though he added “the tremendous anger out there” with the economic situation was probably driving her decisions.Abdul-Sayed conceded that “there’s no doubt that people are fatigued and tired” but said a majority of the state has supported lockdowns as the situations became more dire in the past.“People see cases rise every day and the alarm is growing, so the justification for the restrictions gets clearer every day,” he said. More