Chris Hedges's Blog, page 181

What Is the FBI Hiding About Its Domestic Terror Arrests?

On July 23, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that federal investigations of domestic terrorism had led to some 100 arrests in the last nine months. While the FBI quickly announced that the number was 90, not 100, the basic message appeared unchanged: The FBI was actively investigating and prosecuting domestic terrorists.

The 90 arrests have been cited countless times since last weekend’s killing of 22 people in El Paso, Texas, by a man suspected of harboring racist views of immigrants. To find out more, we contacted the FBI on Monday, asking who had been arrested, as well as where and when, and what the allegations were in each case.

Four days later, we have been given next to no information about them.

Our first inquiry on Monday was straightforward: We asked for basic information about each of the 90 arrests, which we assumed had all been publicly announced.

An FBI spokeswoman wrote back: “We would not be able to provide you with a comprehensive list of these press releases. As there is no federal domestic terrorism statute so DT subjects are charged under other federal, state, and local charges.”

We understood that those arrested for committing or intending to commit violent acts on American soil are typically prosecuted for an assortment of crimes — murder, say, or illegal possession of firearms — not domestic terrorism, for which there’s no federal charge. The 90 people who were supposedly arrested might have been ultimately prosecuted by local authorities.

But it seemed clear from Wray’s statements that the FBI had done the work of determining which of the cases involving, as the spokeswoman put it, “other federal, state and local charges” involved elements of domestic terror. There had been a formal count. Wray had testified as much.

We wrote to the FBI again: “Thank you for getting back to me this fast and for your answer. I am a bit confused though: The number of DT arrests I was referring to originally comes from the FBI Director and was later clarified by a FBI spokesperson. So where would that number come from? I would be happy if you could clarify this point?”

The spokeswoman responded: “What do you mean? We clarified the number, it’s a comprehensive list of press releases that I’m saying we’re unable to provide.”

The spokeswoman, saying she was speaking “on background,” and thus not to be identified, later suggested that we go on the Department of Justice’s public affairs website and “see what pops up.”

So we did. When we typed in domestic terrorism arrests for the past nine months, five cases came up. But only one of the cases actually involved an American arrested for seeking to harm others in the U.S. — Cesar Sayoc, the man recently sentenced to 20 years for mailing 16 explosive devices to a variety of current and former government officials and the philanthropist George Soros.

Obviously, that was far short of the cases Wray had referenced. It also seemed odd that the FBI would suggest this approach to searching since it had to have done a more comprehensive compilation to equip its director with the numbers he gave the Senate Judiciary Committee.

We tried again: “Thanks for your reply! What I mean is: you clarified the number, so despite DT subjects being charged under ‘other federal, state, and local charges,’ as you wrote, the FBI obviously has information about all these cases. And this is what I’ve been originally asking for. So I would be glad if you could give me the following information about as many of the 90 arrests as possible: who was arrested, where, when and what the allegations were. If you are unable to provide this information or a comprehensive list of press releases I would like to know why.”

On the phone, she again cited the figure of 90 arrests, adding, “These are people that the FBI arrested as a result of a domestic terrorism investigation.”

But she also repeated that the bureau couldn’t give us any information, even press releases, about these arrests. “In their arrests they may not be characterized as domestic terrorists depending on how those arrests were made in the locality, in the state … so it’s just not something the FBI is able to publicly provide,” she said.

Yahoo News on Thursday published what it said was a document detailing the 2018 domestic terrorism arrests involving white supremacists, something the article said Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had been unsuccessfully seeking from the Department of Justice.

“This map reflects 32 domestic terrorist attacks, disrupted plots, threats of violence, and weapons stockpiling by individuals with a radical political or social agenda who lack direction or influence from foreign terrorist organizations in 2018,” the document cited in the Yahoo article stated. The document, the article said, had been produced by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security Preparedness.

Late on Thursday, we tried to make things simpler with the FBI in hopes of getting some kind of firm answer: If the FBI could not quickly list the arrests stemming from domestic terrorism investigations, could it say how many such investigations had been carried out in 2019?

The spokeswoman did not respond to the request.

The entire exchange left us increasingly perplexed. The FBI had clearly been proud of its record in making arrests of possible domestic terrorists. Wray had testified that the bureau took the threat “extremely seriously.” The country was eager to be reassured in the aftermath of the killings in El Paso. Why wouldn’t the FBI be able to quickly cite its array of successes?

We asked the FBI if it could send us any of the press releases of the cases Wray had referenced specifically at the hearing. Once again, the spokeswoman demurred.

Trump Administration Overhauls Endangered Species Protections

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration on Monday rolled out some of the broadest changes in decades to enforcement of the landmark Endangered Species Act, allowing the government to put an economic cost on saving a species and other changes critics contend could speed extinction for some struggling plants and animals.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other administration officials contend the changes improve efficiency of oversight, while protecting rare species.

“The best way to uphold the Endangered Species Act is to do everything we can to ensure it remains effective in achieving its ultimate goal — recovery of our rarest species,” he said in a statement. “An effectively administered Act ensures more resources can go where they will do the most good: on-the-ground conservation.”

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Democratic lawmakers, several state attorneys generals and conservation groups said the overhaul would hamper protections for endangered and threatened species.

The Endangered Species Act is credited with helping save the bald eagle, California condor and scores of other animals and plants from extinction since President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1973. The Endangered Species Act currently protects more than 1,600 species in the United States and its territories.

The changes included allowing economic cost to taken into account as the federal government weighs protecting a struggling species, although Congress has stipulated that economic costs not be a factor in deciding whether to protect an animal. That prohibition was meant to ensure that the logging industry, for example, would not be able to push to block protections for a forest-dwelling animal on economic grounds.

Gary Frazer, an assistant director at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told reporters that the government would adhere to that by disclosing the costs to the public, without being a factor for the officials considering the protections.

But Brett Hartl, a government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity conservation group, contended any such price tag would be inflated, and “an invitation for political interference” in the federal government’s decision whether to save a species.

“You have to be really naive and cynical and disingenuous to pretend” otherwise, Hartl said. “That’s the reason that Congress way back…prohibited the Service from doing that,” Hartl said. “It’s a science question: Is a species going extinct, yes or no?”

Other changes include ending blanket protections for species newly listed as threatened and a revision that conservation groups say could block officials from considering the impact on wildlife from climate change, a major and growing threat to many species.

“Nothing in here in my view is a radical change for how we have been consulting and listing species for the last decade or so,” Frazer said. Instead, he said, it brings “more transparency and certainty to the public about the way we’ll carry out our job.”

While the nearly half-century old act has been overwhelmingly successful in saving animals and plants that are listed as endangered, battles over some of the listings have been years-long and legend, pitting northern spotted owls, snail darters and other creatures and their protectors in court and political fights with industries, local opponents and others. Republican lawmakers have pushed for years to change the Endangered Species Act itself, in Congress.

Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who leads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said Monday’s changes in enforcement to the act were “a good start,” but said he would continue working to change the act itself.

Democrats blasted the changes, and conservationists promised a court fight.

The regulations” take a wrecking ball to one of our oldest and most effective environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act,” Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat, said in a statement. “As we have seen time and time again, no environmental protection – no matter how effective or popular – is safe from this administration.”

At least 10 attorneys general joined conservation groups in protesting an early draft of the changes, saying they put more wildlife at greater risk of extinction.

“This effort to gut protections for endangered and threatened species has the same two features of most Trump administration actions: it’s a gift to industry, and it’s illegal. We’ll see the Trump administration in court about it,” Drew Caputo, a vice president of litigation for the conservation advocacy group Earthjustice.

A United Nations report warned in May that more than 1 million plants and animals globally face extinction, some within decades, owning to human development, climate change and other threats. The report called the rate of species loss a record.

In Washington state, Ray Entz, wildlife director for the Kalispel tribe, spoke of losing the struggle to save the last wild mountain caribou in the lower 48 states, despite the creature’s three decades on the Endangered Species List. With logging and other human activities and predators driving down the numbers of the south Selkirk caribou, Canadian officials captured and penned the last surviving members of the species over the winter and pinned them up for their protection.

“There were some tears shed,” Entz said, of the moment when tribal officials realized the animal had dwindled in the wild past the point of saving. “It was a tough pill to swallow.”

Despite the disappearance of the protected caribou species from the contiguous United States, Entz said, “We don’t want to see a weakening of the law.”

“There’s times where hope is something you don’t even want to talk about,” he said. But, “having the Endangered Species Act gives us the opportunity to participate in that recovery.”

The New York Times Can’t Hide Its Pro-War Bias

The New York Times has published five editorials since the beginning of May that are ostensibly critical of a possible military war between the United States and Iran. As anti-war arguments, however, they are woefully lacking—vilifying Iran without subjecting the US to comparable scrutiny, and hiding US aggression towards Iran.

The editorials regurgitate the same anti-Iran demonology pro-war voices offer to try to justify an attack on the country. In one case (5/4/19), readers are told that

there is no doubt that the Revolutionary Guards is a malign actor. Founded in 1979, it was the revolution’s protector. In time, the corps became a tool of violence and military adventurism as Iran expanded its regional influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria.

The same editorial implies that Iran has a nuclear weapons program about which Americans should be concerned, writing:

The administration has fiercely debated imposing sanctions on European, Chinese and Russian entities working with Iran to convert facilities capable of pursuing nuclear-weapons related activities to more peaceful, energy-oriented projects. On Friday, the State Department announced that while work at three key facilities will be allowed to continue for 90 days, the administration will reconsider the decision at the end of that period. Some other nuclear-related activities will be prohibited.

Saying that Iran has “facilities capable of pursuing nuclear-weapons related activities,” which should be “convert[ed]” so that they can work on “more peaceful, energy-oriented projects,” strongly implies that Iran has a nuclear weapons program or is close to having one, as does an editorial (7/19/19) that claims Iran has “nuclear ambitions.” There is no basis for this insinuation: Iran has no nuclear weapons program, hasn’t been close to having one since at least 2003, and . (See FAIR.org, 10/17/17.)

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The series of editorials in this series, furthermore, describe Iran as doing (presumably nefarious) “work on missile systems” (7/19/19), and as “a despotic Middle East regime” (6/20/19) that provides “support for regional terrorist organizations” (7/19/19).

No US institution or practice is sweepingly condemned in a comparable fashion. Carrying out an invasion of Iraq, as the US military did, and causing as many as a million deaths is not considered the conduct of a “malign actor” or “a tool of violence and military adventurism”; nor is keeping children in cages or having the world’s largest prison population evidence of a “despotic…regime.” Whatever the Times’ definition of “support for regional terrorist organizations” is, it evidently does not include backing racist groups in Libya, laying waste to Syrian cities or flooding the country with weapons that helped ISIS, or carrying out massacres in Afghanistan, or underwriting brutality in Yemen and Palestine.

In this respect, the Times’ apparent anti-war editorials bolster the case for war against Iran: If Iran is a “despotic . . . regime” that provides “support for regional terrorist organizations” and has a military outfit that is “no doubt . . . a malign actor” and a “tool of violence and military adventurism,” readers can be forgiven for failing to rush out and organize a peace movement. And if the United States is or has none of these things—or, in the case of a nuclear weapons program and “work on missile systems,” is presumably allowed to have them—they may be confused about why the US shouldn’t bomb or invade Iran, or overthrow its government, or some combination of these.

The editorials also muddy responsibility for the crisis, presenting what is happening as roughly equally the fault of the United States and Iran. The first editorial (5/4/19) argued that the “Trump administration is playing a dangerous game in Iran, risking a serious miscalculation by either side.” The problem isn’t so much the risk of “a serious miscalculation by either side” as it is deliberate US calculations to inflict misery on Iranians in an effort to force Iran to submit to US orders. US sanctions are severely harming Iranians, causing food shortages, undermining the healthcare system, preventing flood relief from getting to Iranians, setting off a collapse in economic growth and driving the country into a deep recession while helping to push up inflation; all of this information was publicly available before any of these editorials were published. Iran, of course, has done nothing comparable to US society.

Similar, the subsequent editorial (6/20/19) contended that,anti-missile batteries, reconnaissance aircraft, and air and missile “defense” systems to Iran’s doorstep—alongside 1,500 troops, on top of the 60–80,000 fighters the US admits to having in the area, to say nothing of the thousands more US forces in the region’s seas. If the two countries are on a “collision course,” it’s because the US is driving its vehicle directly into Iran’s.

with opposing military forces in such proximity, with accusations and munitions flying and with the White House facing a trust deficit, the danger of open conflict increases by the day.

What this elides is where these forces are in proximity and why: They are close to each other in Iran’s immediate vicinity, where Iranian military equipment and personnel are naturally located, and where US weapons, spy equipment, soldiers, sailors and pilots have provocatively been sent. This is the reason that “conflict increases by the day”; at last check, Iran does not have any weapons, or land, sea or air forces off the US coast.

In the Times’ fourth editorial on the subject (6/21/19), the authors wrote that the

risks of conflict are now growing sharply. Even if the two governments are not ready for diplomacy, at the very least such a connection could help ensure that the many military assets arrayed around one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes don’t ignite a war.

Wars don’t spontaneously combust, nor do the “risks of conflict . . . [grow] sharply” on their own. These dangers have come about because “the many military assets arrayed around one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes” include those of Iran, which are in the vicinity because that’s where Iranians have the audacity to live, and those of the US, which include more than 50 military bases surrounding Iran, more than 7,000 miles from American shores. Iran has a grand total of zero bases encircling the United States.

These editorials make it sound as if the US and Iran have been brought to the edge of war by immutable physical laws, rather than by conscious decisions the US ruling class has made. Framing the issue this way hides US government responsibility for the increased possibility of war. Occluding which party is at fault for a war or the possibility thereof makes it harder for the public to identity who needs to be mobilized against. This problem is particularly acute when it is the US paper of record obscuring the ways Washington is increasing tensions with Iran, and bringing the countries closer to a devastating war.

The Long and Bloody History of White Supremacy in the U.S.

What follows is a conversation between professor “The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism” author Gerald Horne and Marc Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you all with us.

The terrorist attack on a Walmart in El Paso has brought the rise and danger of white supremacist nationalism into full focus and is part of all of our conversations. The right-wing violence that has become an all too common occurrence in our nation are not mere aberrations. Sure, it’s about Trump, 4chan, 8chan and the deeply racist nature of our society and world, but it just didn’t pop out of thin air. These movements and attacks are not new, but are embedded in our society from our past in the very founding of this nation, and in the words of our guest, made up of the revolutions and counter revolutions that make up our American history. What does our American history tell us about this moment, about the time that we’re in?

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What can we learn from it, and what does it say about our future and the future possibilities and the strategies for us to consider as we face this white nationalist movement? We are joined by Dr. Gerald Horne who holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He’s written numerous books. His latest books are Storming the Heavens and most recently, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism. Gerald Horne, welcome. Good to have you with us here at The Real News. Glad you could be with us in Baltimore.

GERALD HORNE: Thank you for inviting me.

MARC STEINER: Yes. I like this interaction much better than the distance. This is good. As we were talking about in the introduction, I think that what we’re facing now with this white supremacist, alt-right, however people want to describe this nationalist movement, white nationalist movement, it has deep roots in our country. This is not something that just popped up out of nowhere, right? You’re one of our great historians. Let’s begin at the beginning, and I understand you’ve been working on 15th century ideas, so give us a sense of what the roots of this are for our country.

GERALD HORNE: I’m doing a book on the 1500s.

MARC STEINER: 1500s. [crosstalk]

GERALD HORNE: 16th century and it helps to shed light on how Spain lost its first movers’ advantage. After all, they commissioned Columbus, they established footholds in Santo Domingo, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and even St. Augustine, Florida. By 1565, despite all of this talk about 1619 being the date when Africans arrived, the Spanish had brought Africans from their perch in Santo Domingo to St. Augustine, Florida, where they had settled as early as 1565 and in fact had brought Africans to what is now South Carolina as early as the 1520s, but the Africans rebelled and joined the Indigenous side and wounded the Spanish severely, which created an opening for the English to arrive, which was one of the reasons we’re sitting here speaking—

MARC STEINER: English and not Spanish.

GERALD HORNE: … English today. In terms of the English triumphing over the Spanish, they unleashed a tidal wave of propaganda against the Spanish. It reminds me of the propaganda and unleashed against Japan before 1945, portraying them as evil, devious, sneaky, diabolical, bloodthirsty, et cetera. As well, this helps to set up this in the context of this religious conflict, Protestant London versus Catholic Spain. I don’t think you can begin to understand the kind of violence that’s been unleashed against people of Mexican origin without understanding this religious background and the settler colonial background.

In any case, the Spanish, really privileged religion. They would send priests to the docks at St. Augustine to make sure that settlers were religiously correct, for example. The scrappy underdogs, the English, in order to outflank the Spanish, they moved— I would say rather cynically and wisely— to a Pan-European project. Welcoming settlers of, as they said in London, pure European descent, which broadened the base for settler colonialism, created a larger population base for London to challenge Madrid as well, and then that wins the day.

MARC STEINER: This is a conscious policy, right?

GERALD HORNE: Oh, yeah. Well, it’s events impelling a policy I would say.

MARC STEINER: Okay. Right, right. All right.

GERALD HORNE: Then of course, if you look at Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, who becomes squatters in north Mexico, although they say that they were invited in the 1820s. What happens is that in the 1820s, coincidentally enough, Mexico moves towards abolishing slavery. Austin and Houston were major slave owners as well as the other so-called Anglo settlers. This leads to the secession from Mexico in 1836, the setting up the so-called Republic of Texas, which becomes a major slave trading power. That brings it into further conflict with Mexico, which had moved oppressively towards abolition of slavery under a president of African descent 180 years before Barack Obama. I’m speaking of Vincent Guerrero, the 1820s.

Then independent Texas could not take the pressure from abolitionist Britain and revolutionary Haiti, so they crawl into the Union in 1845 where they’ve been ever since, but that’s not the end of conflict. In fact, some of the bloodiest conflict directed, bloodiest attacks directed at people of Mexican origin comes in about a hundred years ago during their Mexican Revolutionary period, 1910 to 1920. The kind of bloodshed you saw in El Paso just a few days ago, during that decade, that was a regular occurrence not only on the part of so-called Anglo settlers directing the attack, but the Texas Rangers would not be an exaggeration to suggest they’re kind of stormtroopers for the state of Texas.

Therefore, when this screed was issued by the alleged perpetrator of this massacre in El Paso, I was not surprised at all given this historical background, and I certainly was not surprised as well that he made this reference to so-called great replacement, which also comes up in Charlottesville in August 2017. This idea amongst some who are defined as white that not only are they being replaced by people of color, but it’s part of a so-called Jewish conspiracy as well who are portrayed as the masterminds. This theory has also taken root in New Zealand. Recall what happened in Christchurch some months ago. In many ways it comes out of France where there’s a similar amount of hysteria.

MARC STEINER: Renaud Camus and that whole school of thinking, right?

GERALD HORNE: Exactly. This is taking place in the context, I’m afraid to say, of another epical event, which is the rise of China, which may be the leading economy on planet earth sooner rather than later. By some measures, it already is. That’ll have cultural, geopolitical impact as well. And so, in some ways as they like to say in the United States, we’re facing a perfect storm when it comes to the struggle against white supremacy. That is to say, the rise of white supremacy. Then this raises the question of what to do about it.

On a more positive note given I’ve been issuing pessimistic notes up to this point, one of the things I was heartened by is the fact that the government of Mexico City says that it may have to intervene to protect its nationals because about one-third of the people massacred in El Paso were Mexican citizens. Not to mention, a disproportionate number of people of Mexican origin in this 22nd largest city in the United States with an 80% Latino, Latinx population. That’s good news because hopefully they’ll take it not only into Mexican courts, but into the Organization of American States, in Washington, DC and then they’ll get support from the Caribbean nations who are pressing their own claims for reparations.

Likewise, with regard to the negative rhetoric of the 45th US President, when he said, “Send them back,” in reference to the progressive Congresswomen, one of the more heartening aspects of that is the attack on him by Chancellor Merkel of Germany. I say that because if you look at the history of struggle against white supremacy in the United States, historically, in order to be successful, we needed a global movement. It wasn’t enough just to organize within the four corners of the United States of America. That’s the import of the anti-slavery movement. Reference my previous comment about abolitionist Britain and revolutionary Haiti. That’s the import of the struggle against Jim Crow accelerating in the 1950s when Washington is under siege by the socialist camp and trying to win hearts and minds in developing countries as independent Africa is surging to independence and wanting to appeal to independent Africa. Therefore, this puts pressure on Washington to do the right thing, at least move away from the more egregious aspects of Jim Crow. In a nutshell, that’s my analysis.

MARC STEINER: I’m going to take some of what you just said and figure out where we are in terms of our history and what this teaches us for this moment. As I said earlier to you before we went on the air together, that I’ve been working a lot around the end of Reconstruction in 1877, when we see Rutherford B. Hayes becoming President of United States. The Klan is already in emotion, and they’ve been terrorizing people in the South, and especially in the South.

You had these moderate Republicans and the redemptionist Democrats pushing him in. A minority of the vote he wins and it sets up 90 years of abject terror against the black community in the South. It takes hold. So, “Make America Great Again.” The question I have is, how does that moment also in its international complexity that you refer to, how does that moment speak to us now? I often think we’re in some ways facing a similar time where everything people fought for, whether it’s Reconstruction or the Civil Rights Movement and movements that place in the ’60s and ’70s, it could be pushed back in very serious ways. I mean, did that historical knowledge hold water, and if it does, what does it mean for us?

GERALD HORNE: Well, you happen to be talking about a person who wrote a book about 1776 called The Counterrevolution of 1776, which is the launching pad for my historical thesis: The counterrevolution has been a constant thread throughout the body of US history. And not only in 1776, but 1836 when Texas secedes from Mexico in order to perpetuate slavery; 1861 the Confederate states secede in order for Dixie to perpetuate slavery forevermore.

Part of the contradiction with Reconstruction that historians are only beginning to grapple with now is that at the same time that the Union government, the government in Washington, DC was moving forward on Reconstruction, in some ways they were trying to ride two horses going in different directions at the same time because there were also moving aggressively to take land from Native Americans. Recall that 1876-1877 is also the time of George Custer, for example. That is to say, trying to massacre these what we refer to, at least in the non-Indigenous community as Plains Indians, and their battle royales between the blue coats, the US government forces, oftentimes including Buffalo soldiers, I’m afraid. That is to say, Negro soldiers and Native Americans fighting for their land.

This is a major contradiction. It’s difficult to move in a regressive direction and a progressive direction simultaneously, particularly in a country where the major theme has been counterrevolution. To that extent, looking backwards, you can almost say that Reconstruction was almost doomed to run aground. What I hope today is that we don’t make the same mistake, that we don’t try to disengage, say for example, foreign policy from the debate about domestic policy. In that light, I’m somewhat concerned about some of the Democratic Party aspirants to replace Trump because they rarely discuss foreign policy. At the debates, foreign policy rarely and barely comes up.

MARC STEINER: And the connections you’re talking about never come up.

GERALD HORNE: Oh, please. Now you’re going too far. Of course not. As I said, if we’re really going to prevail, we really have to take advantage of these global currents, reference what I just said about the government of Mexico City is doing, et cetera. I think part of the problem with regard to Reconstruction was once again, despite the fact that slavery’s abolition had been propelled in no small measure by abolitionist Britain and revolutionary Haiti, by the time of Reconstruction, you have the spectacle of Maryland’s own Frederick Douglass working with the US administration to annex a good deal of the island of Hispaniola that includes Haiti. Then, dispatching a goodly number of the Negro population there. Once again, trying to go in two directions at the same time is doomed to failure.

MARC STEINER: Fast forward to where we are now – both in terms of strategy, the strategic look at it in terms of where we are, and what those moments tell you about who we are as a people and what our politics are. What does that leave us? I know part of the huge thesis in your work is this counterrevolution you just mentioned. You can look at 1946 to the early ’70s as a revolutionary period that made massive changes in this country and the counterrevolution that’s taking place. It’s sort of taking place in late ’60s, early ’70s. It’s galvanized and it’s in power at the moment in the executive branch. What is our history and say to us about what our strategies could be, should be, and what we might be facing?

GERALD HORNE: I would make a point domestically that I think all progressive people can agree on unfortunately, which is that if you look at the history of the anti-Jim Crow movement, it could not have made as much progress as it did without the support of unions. Martin Luther King’s movement was funded in no small measure by District 65, now of the United Auto Workers in New York City. Not to mention UAW itself headquartered in Michigan.

If you look at movements on the left, for example, the petition at the United Nations, 1950-1951 charging United States with genocide against black people led by Paul Robeson. A lot of that funding came from the West Coast Longshoreman who of course played a pivotal role in the anti-apartheid movement shutting down docs from Seattle to San Diego, making sure that apartheid merchandise was not delivered in the United States of America.

The role of unions is critical and essential, and I think all of us can agree on that. If we don’t have buy-in from unions, I’m afraid to say that the outlook is rather pessimistic. Then secondly, what I’ve been saying all along, which is the internationalism of filing petitions at the Organization of American States, at the United Nations, at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Sending delegations to Brussels, Brasilia Victoria, China, Russia, et cetera.

Right now if you look at the Trump base, 63 million strong. The latest polls I’ve seen, that even though he’s now being accused of being a racist and accused of having blood on his hands in light of this invasion rhetoric that helped to propel El Paso, his base does not seem to be crumbling at all. In fact, I think if you were to do a cold-blooded analysis, which is rarely done in this country, you might come to the conclusion that in some ways the base to the right of the leaders. I think oftentimes some of my friends on the left, they act like if you get rid of Fox News, people will stop being right-wing in this country.

MARC STEINER: Right, right.

GERALD HORNE: I wish it were that simple. And so, that also underscores the uphill climb that we have in terms of beating back what could only be called a neo-fascist wave, because it reminds me of the 1930s when you had the New Deal under FDR. Then those to their left, say the Communist Party, they were called New Dealers in a hurry. Now I think today, you have the neo-fascists who are moving step by step, packing the courts, shredding the safety net, cutting taxes on the wealthy. Then you have the fascists in a hurry such as the ones going to El Paso and start massacring people. This is something that I’m afraid we’re going to have to come to grips with.

MARC STEINER: Let’s talk about, before we have to conclude, what coming to grips –what that means? I too sometimes when I think about this and interview and write about this and work on these things, can let myself fall into pessimism. That we’re in trouble here. When you just said, and what you said, 63 million Americans backing Trump— that’s the majority of white people in this country we’re talking about politically backing Donald Trump.

GERALD HORNE: The right-wing has won the white vote steadily for the last half century. That’s before Fox News, by the way.

MARC STEINER: Way before Fox News.

GERALD HORNE: Right.

MARC STEINER: The only thing that I remember ever putting a blunt in that in my own work in the ’60s was down to earth, hard work of organizing in poor white communities that made alliances with black communities and Native communities and Latino communities, like in Chicago and other places with Young Patriots. But these are small examples of things that have happened, or Fannie Lou Hamer taking former Klansmen and putting them into her co-op work in Mississippi. Those things worked and they really were, but that had to do with this common struggle. The unions had a role in that as well, but we don’t have that now. None of that. Then, you have mostly liberal, moderate Democrats, moderate Democrats and these very conservative right-wing Republicans, which is the world we’re caught in. Are there strategies from the past that speak to us about what we need to think about doing to confront all of this?

GERALD HORNE: Well, we faced a similar dilemma in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s when Ronald Wilson Reagan vetoed the Conference of Anti-apartheid Act during his reign from 1980 to 1988 and spoke very sympathetically about neo-fascism and apartheid in South Africa, in Pretoria. Of course we relied very heavily on unions. We had relied very heavily on students. We relied very heavily on the black community to push back against this pro-apartheid policy. Ultimately we prevailed because Congress overturned his veto and the Anti-Apartheid Act was enacted, which was a huge leap forward in terms of bringing the first democratic elections to South Africa by 1994.

It seems to me that in addition to understandably and justifiably this concern about the elections of 2020, we also need to be concerned about the mass movements that oftentimes propelled the candidates, particularly those who see themselves as being the anti-Trump coalition. That would once again include unions, students, and the black community, and I would now say the Latinx community because there’s a lot of energy right now in the Latinx community in light of El Paso, understandably and justifiably. The positive aspect amongst many of this community are the organic connections to Latin America, particular to the government of Mexico City under Lopez Obrador who’s been walking softly with regard to a confrontation with Mr. Trump, which I wholly and fully understand. But this latest outrage might be the prelude to opening more doors in Mexico City, which would be a game changer.

MARC STEINER: Well, this is fascinating just because I think the perspective of history you’re bringing it here, especially the international aspects of history, the international aspects of the struggle for human rights and the struggle to end slavery and segregation is something we don’t think about it, nor do we put together with a struggle here in this country and how these things are interconnected. Unless we do it in very narrow ideological ways, it’s not really seen as how impactful it was on the world we’re in.

Before you have to run, just on a closing note, you look at the movements we have in this country from the young congressional representatives and young people elected all over this country, new voices in city councils and state legislators. You see a kind of a bubbling up of a new union movement from the very bottom that’s taking place. Sometimes I’m not sure how powerful it is, but I’m watching it grow and the resistance in the black community, the resistance in the Native community. You can let yourself become pessimistic that all is lost, but there is a movement growing in this country that has a different vision of who we are as a people and as a nation. Do you have any sense of what that future might be? I know you’re not prescient. None of us are prescient, you know? But, I mean—Because they do, they’re the ones where we hold the hope that something’s going to happen.

GERALD HORNE: Well, part of the good news, ironically enough, is the reinvisioning of the past. And I see this in particular in the people in Native American Studies who are becoming much more vigorous in protesting what they correctly refer to as settler colonialism. A term that is largely absent from conversations and discourses even on the US left. If you’re not invoking the term of settler colonialism, you cannot begin to understand how we’ve reached the precipice of disaster, which is we’re just where we’re now standing.

Like yourself, I too am not pessimistic in light of these movements. I’m particularly heartened by the rise of the Climate Change Movement, the Sunrise Movement in particular because I think what it portends is a kind of mass action. That is to say, disruptive mass action, which you also had in terms of felling— F-E-L-L-I-N-G— both Jim Crow and apartheid. For example, in my book on Southern Africa, I talk about how you had aerial freedom rides. That is to say, that anti-apartheid activists, they flew planes into illegally-occupied Namibia, southwest Africa, then under illegal South African occupation. They refused to get visas and dropped leaflets, almost crashed, but it was that kind of novel strategy and tactic that ultimately won the day. When I see the Sunrise Movement, I envision activists in the mold and the mode of the aerial freedom riders.

MARC STEINER: That’s really just fascinating. Gerald Horne, I wish we had more and more time. We don’t, but glad you were in Baltimore. Glad we’re doing this face to face. Thank you so much for your work and your thoughts. I look forward to doing this much more.

GERALD HORNE: Thank you.

MARC STEINER: I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Hope you enjoyed this. Let us know what you think. Keep on watching. Take care.

Bernie Sanders Is Acing the Electability Test

Bolstered by strong support from independent and young voters, Sen. Bernie Sanders would roundly defeat President Donald Trump in a 2020 general election match-up, according to a SurveyUSA poll.

The poll showed Sanders, a senator from Vermont and 2020 Democratic presidential contender, beating Trump by eight percentage points—50-42—in a hypothetical head-to-head contest.

The survey also showed former Vice President Joe Biden defeating Trump by the same margin.

“Candidates such as senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris edged out Trump in potential runoffs, but their leads weren’t wide enough to overcome the margin of error,” Newsweek reported. “South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg was measured at 42 percent, two points behind Trump in a potential matchup.”

Brand new poll from SurveyUSA:

Bernie 50% (+8)

Trump 42%

This is the FIFTEENTH straight poll that shows Bernie defeating Trump.#BernieBeatsTrump https://t.co/byF1WkjvCS

— Josh #Bernie2020

New Trump Rules Can Deny Green Cards to Immigrants on Food Stamps

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced Monday that it is moving ahead with one of its most aggressive steps to restrict legal immigration, denying green cards to many immigrants who use Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers or other forms of public assistance.

Federal law already requires those seeking green cards and legal status to prove they will not be a burden to the U.S. — a “public charge” —but the new rules detail a broader range of programs that could disqualify them.

Much of President Donald Trump’s effort to crack down on illegal immigration has been in the spotlight, but this rule change targets people who entered the United States legally and are seeking permanent status. It’s part of a push to move the U.S. to a system that focuses on immigrants’ skills instead of emphasizing the reunification of families.

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers will now weigh public assistance along with other factors such as education, household income and health to determine whether to grant legal status.

The rules will take effect in mid-October. They don’t apply to U.S. citizens, even if the U.S. citizen is related to an immigrant who is subject to them.

The acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, said the rule change fits with the Republican president’s message.

“We want to see people coming to this country who are self-sufficient,” Cuccinelli said. “That’s a core principle of the American dream. It’s deeply embedded in our history, and particularly our history related to legal immigration.”

Immigrants make up a small percentage of those who get public benefits. In fact, many are ineligible for public benefits because of their immigration status.

But advocates worry the rules will scare immigrants into not asking for help. And they are concerned the rules give too broad an authority to decide whether someone is likely to need public assistance at any time, giving immigration officials the ability to deny legal status to more people.

On average, 544,000 people apply annually for green cards, with about 382,000 falling into categories that would be subject to this review, according to the government.

Guidelines in use since 1999 referred to a public charge as someone primarily dependent on cash assistance, income maintenance or government support for long-term institutionalization.

Under the new rules, the Department of Homeland Security has redefined a public charge as someone who is “more likely than not” to receive public benefits for more than 12 months within a 36-month period. If someone has two benefits, that is counted as two months. And the definition has been broadened to include Medicaid, housing assistance and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Following publication of the proposed rules last fall, Homeland Security received 266,000 public comments, more than triple the average number for a rule change at the agency, and it made a series of amendments to the final rules as a result.

For example, women who are pregnant and on Medicaid or who need public assistance will not be subject to the new rules during the pregnancy and for 60 days after the birth of the baby.

The Medicare Part D low-income subsidy won’t be considered a public benefit. And public benefits received by children up until age 21 won’t be considered. Nor will emergency medical assistance, school lunch programs, foster care or adoption, student loans and mortgages, food pantries, homeless shelters or disaster relief.

Cuccinelli said the comments resulted in changes that “we think it made a better, stronger rule.”

Green card hopefuls will be required to submit three years of federal tax returns in addition to a history of employment. And if immigrants have private health insurance that will weigh heavily in their favor.

Active U.S. military members are exempt. So are refugees or asylum seekers, and the rules would not be applied retroactively, officials said. But the Trump administration also has moved to drastically reduce asylum in the U.S.

The administration recently tried to effectively end the protections at the U.S.-Mexico border before the effort was blocked by a court. It has sent more than 30,000 asylum seekers mostly from Central America back to Mexico wait out their immigration cases.

According to an Associated Press analysis of census data, low-income immigrants who are not citizens use Medicaid, food aid, cash assistance and Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, at a lower rate than comparable low-income native-born adults.

In general, immigrants are a small portion of those receiving public benefits. For example, non-citizen immigrants make up only 6.5 percent of all those participating in Medicaid. More than 87 percent of participants are native-born. The same goes for food assistance: Immigrants make up only 8.8 percent of recipients, and more than 85 percent of participants are native-born.

The new public assistance threshold, taken together with higher requirements for education, work skills and health, will make it more difficult for immigrants to qualify for green cards, advocates say.

“Without a single change in the law by Congress, the Trump public charge rules mean many more U.S. citizens are being and will be denied the opportunity to live together in the U.S. with their spouses, children and parents,” said Ur Jaddou, a former Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel who’s now director of the DHS Watch run by an immigrant advocacy group. “These are not just small changes. They are big changes with enormous consequences for U.S. citizens.”

The new rules come at a time of increased criticism over Trump’s hardline policies and his rhetoric.

On Aug. 3, 22 people were killed and dozens were injured in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, a border city that has become the face of the migration crisis. The shooting suspect told authorities he targeted Mexicans in the attack.

Critics contend Trump’s words have contributed to a combustible climate that has spawned death and violence, but Trump disagrees.

Fear vs. Fear

The old rules of politics no longer apply. The only language understood by Donald Trump and his coterie of con artists, billionaires, generals, misfits and Christian fascists—and a Democratic Party that has sold us out—is fear. Calling out Trump’s lies and racism does not matter. Calling out his nepotism and corruption does not matter. Calling out the criminality of his administration does not matter. Calling out its incompetence and idiocy does not matter. Calling out the abject subservience of the ruling elites to corporate power does not matter. Trump and his Democratic Party opponents are immune to moral suasion. The more we engage in this empty kabuki theater with its predictable outlandish outbursts, usually from Trump, and predictable outraged responses, usually from Democrats, the more certain are government paralysis and corporate tyranny. The drivel and invective that passes for political discourse is a giant hamster wheel that goes nowhere. It masks the root causes of our political and economic decline and fractures the population into warring camps that increasingly communicate through violence, which is why the United States has suffered mass shootings with three or more fatalities more than 30 times this year.

We will save ourselves only by pitting power against power. And since our two major political parties slavishly serve corporate power, and have few substantial differences on nearly all major issues from imperialism to unfettered capitalism, we must start from scratch. The political personalities, including those on the left such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren, are distractions. They have no power within the Democratic Party, as Nancy Pelosi often reminds us. They serve to reduce politics to personal feuds, the currency of the vast reality show perpetrated for profit by corporate media. The daily back and forth by these personalities diverts our attention from the rapid consolidation of wealth and power by the ruling elites, the degradation of the ecosystem into a toxic wasteland and the eradication of basic freedoms and rights. The American political system is not salvageable. It will be overthrown in a mass uprising—a version of which we saw recently in Puerto Rico—or vast swaths of the globe will become uninhabitable and the rich will feed like ghouls off the mounting human misery. These are the two stark options. And we have very little time left.

The Democrats, if they had a functioning political party and were not owned and managed by corporations, could easily displace Trump and demolish the Republican Party in electoral landslide after landslide. From poll after poll, as Charles Derber points out in his book “Welcome to the Revolution,” we know what the majority of Americans want. A whooping 82% think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington, with 70% singling out large businesses as having too much power. Nearly 80% support stronger rules and enforcement of regulations on the financial industry. Nearly half of Americans think economic inequality is “very big,” and 34% concede it is “moderately big.” Almost 60% of registered voters and 51% of registered Republicans favor raising to $18,000 from $14,820 the maximum amount that workers can make and still be eligible for the earned income tax credit. A staggering 96% of Americans, including 96% of Republicans, believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the American system. Close to 80% believe wealthy Americans should pay higher taxes. Nearly 60% favor raising the federal minimum wage requirement to $12 an hour. Sixty-one percent, including 42% of Republicans, approve of labor unions. Sixty percent of Americans think “[i]t is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare,” and 60% of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.” Nearly 60% favor free early-childhood education, and 76% are “very concerned” about climate disruption. Eighty-four percent support requiring background checks for all gun buyers. Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

A genuine populism and New Deal socialism are the only hope of thwarting the rise of neofascist movements. This, however, will never be permitted by the Democratic Party hierarchy, led by figures such as Pelosi, Joe Biden and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are acutely aware they would instantly lose their power without the prop of hundreds of millions of corporate dollars. They, and their corporate sponsors, will block all reform even if it means another four years of Trump and the extinguishing of democracy. The only thing they have to sell us is fear—fear of Trump and the Russians. While Trump sells the fear of immigrants, Muslims, people of color and those he brands as socialists. This is a toxic diet.

The greatest traitors in America are not Trump and his neofascist minions shouting “Lock her up” or “Send her home,” but a decadent, morally bankrupt, self-identified liberal elite consumed by greed. They orchestrated the social inequality that permits Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to control more wealth than the bottom 50% of the American population. They pay lip service to the climate crisis but have not done anything to halt the sixth great mass extinction. The fossil fuel industry, under the Democrats and Republicans, continues to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The polar ice caps disappear. The sea levels rise. The deforestation expands. The clogging of the oceans with floating islands of plastic that poisons our food chain is unchecked. No one among the ruling elites has any intention of restraining a bloated, out-of-control military that consumes half of all discretionary spending while half the country lives in poverty or near poverty, the federal deficit looks set to exceed $1 trillion by the end of this fiscal year and the nation’s infrastructure disintegrates.

All meaningful resistance takes place outside the formal political structures. The 10-day protest in April in London led by Extinction Rebellion—which saw 1,130 people arrested as crowds repeatedly shut down major parts of the city in demonstrating against the failure of the ruling elites to confront the climate catastrophe—is what we must emulate. Extinction Rebellion has called for a strike by workers around the world in October, a strike in which thousands of arrests are anticipated.

We have exceeded the 350 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 that climate scientists said was the level at which we still might have thwarted societal collapse. Last July was the hottest in recorded history. We are currently at 415 ppm of CO2, with enough heat in the system to ensure 450 ppm of CO2 within a decade. A temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Age measurement guarantees catastrophic climate disruptions.

“We’re looking at the collapse of the world’s agriculture systems,” Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, told me when we spoke in London. “Long before the sea level rises, we’re going to have a world economic collapse because we’re not going to be able to feed ourselves. That’s what’s shitting everyone. That’s why people are in a panic. In the U.N., in academia, in the elites, they’re looking at this. They’re pulling their hair out. We have this repressed media space so it’s not obvious to everyone. I think this is the role of Extinction Rebellion—to break through that repression. Once you break through it, people will say, yeah. The whole thing is beyond bad.”

“We need to insulate all housing stock,” he said. “We need to turn over the economy so that it’s completely electrified. We need to have all the energy coming from renewables. We need a social transformation, so the rich are taxed and pay their fair share. We need to organize communities around quality of life so that people can learn to adapt to these changes, these traumatic changes. This is a matter of physics. It’s not a matter of political opinion. These changes are coming. It’s far too late for massive increases in temperature not to happen. What we’re looking at now is whether we’re going to go extinct or not. I know that sounds like science fiction, but it’s true. We need to look at the figures. It’s like going to the doctor. This is cancer. You don’t like it, that’s fine, but it’s not going to stop you from dying. The only option is do you want to accept that this is the situation? Or don’t you? If you don’t, you’re going to die. If you do, there is a chance. But you’re going to have to get a move on it.”

“We’re saying this to everyone in society, not just to progressives,” he said. “Wake up! At the end of the day, we’ve all got kids. We’ve all got young people we know. If we have any empathy or responsibility for the young generation, it’s all hands on deck. The most civilized way of dealing with the situation is to come together as a country, as a world, in citizen assemblies, and allow the ordinary people of the world to decide what to do. After all, it’s their lives.”

By stepping outside the system, including in our voting patterns, we begin to make the ruling elites afraid. Change comes from pressure. But if we are not willingly to become outcasts, that pressure will never happen. It was not the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for example, led by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, that first proposed the Green New Deal. It was articulated 12 years ago by the Green Party, which called for massive job and public works programs to transition our energy infrastructure to renewable energy. The deal was promoted by Howie Hawkins when he ran for the governorship in New York in 2014 and by Jill Stein during her 2016 presidential run.

The proposal for a Green New Deal by the Green Party has a fundamental difference from what is touted by progressive Democrats. It does not argue that structural change and a transition to renewable energy will come by making alliances with corporate power. Instead, it insists that we bring about a transformational change in our economy by crushing corporate power and establishing a socialist system.

“The Democrats don’t have real solutions,” Hawkins, who is seeking the Green Party nomination for the presidency, told me in New York. “Trump is a racist scapegoater. He is a freeloading leech who doesn’t pay his own employees, contracts, taxes. He lies to the people. He needs to go. But if you replace him with a Democrat, they’re not going to enact ‘Medicare for All.’ They’re not going to do a Green New Deal. They are backing Trump, who now wants a war for oil in Venezuela, while the planet is burning from burning oil. It’s madness.”

“The historic role of third parties in this country is to raise issues that major parties won’t take up,” he went on. “Like the Liberty Party and the question of slavery. They were the abolitionists when the Whigs and the Democrats didn’t want to touch the issue. We can go for 150 years of history and show how that’s the case.”

“We are not going to get to 100 percent clean energy if Exxon gets to reinvest its earnings in more oil exploration extraction and sales,” he said. “The Koch brothers and all their interests in the oil industry, those should be publicly owned. We take the earnings, because we’ll use fossil fuels during the transition, and reinvest it in renewable. That’s the socialist solution. You can get some socialist programs, like Social Security or Medicare for All, which Bernie Sanders champions, but as long as the capitalist oligarchy has power based on their concentrated ownership of the economy, which translates into political power, they can roll it back.”

“When I talk about a Green New Deal, I’m talking about an economic bill of rights like [Franklin] Roosevelt called for at the end of his 1944 State of the Union address,” Hawkins said. “A job. Income. Health care. Housing. Education. The civil rights picked that up with the [1963] March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with the Freedom Budget, and the [1968] Poor People’s Campaign. But we still don’t have it. The other part is 100 percent clean energy by 2030. We have to reorganize all sectors [of the economy]—agriculture, manufacturing, the military, transportation—toward sustainability. Or we’ll never get to 100 percent clean energy.”

Switch off the electronic images. Ignore the media burlesque. The endless political shows, which turn presidential campaigns into mind-numbing, two-year-long marathons, are entertainment. Do not trust anyone in power. We will save ourselves by building mass movements to overthrow corporate power. I am not certain we will succeed. But I am certain that if we fail, we are doomed.

Warren Wows in Iowa as Candidates’ Sprint to Caucuses Begins

DES MOINES, Iowa—The chant — “2 cents, 2 cents, 2 cents” — started in the back of a massive crowd that packed sidewalks at the Iowa State Fair. Elizabeth Warren, basking in the unprompted adulation of her proposed wealth tax, prompted roars as she called on the ultra-wealthy to “pitch in 2 cents so everybody gets a chance to make it.”

A night before, the Massachusetts senator enjoyed similar treatment when Democrats at a party dinner jumped to their feet — some beginning to dance — at the opening bars of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” the song that would usher Warren on stage.

For someone whose White House ambitions were dismissed by some Democrats earlier this year after a shaky campaign launch, Warren’s reception in Iowa this weekend was a clear warning sign to other candidates that hers is a campaign to be reckoned with in the state that kicks off the race for the party’s nomination.

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Warren was one of nearly two dozen candidates who paraded through Iowa this weekend, speaking at the state fair, the annual Wing Ding dinner and a forum on gun control. The sheer volume of presidential contenders signaled a new phase of the campaign, ending the get-to-know-you period and beginning a six-month sprint to the Iowa caucuses.

In that time, the historically large field will winnow, front-runner Joe Biden will be tested more forcefully and a fierce competition will unfold for candidates to be seen as the more viable alternative. They’ll be competing for the support of Democrats who say repeatedly that, despite their differences, their top priority is landing on a nominee who can defeat President Donald Trump.

As the caucuses near, strategists say Warren’s ground-level organization — demonstrated by her large staff and a proven ability to get her supporters to appear at large events like the fair — is fueling her momentum.

“Elizabeth has a super organization and her campaign is hot,” said David Axelrod, who helped run former President Barack Obama’s winning Iowa campaign. “But we’ve seen hot candidates before. August is no guarantee of what happens in February.”

As Biden maintains a tenuous lead in polls and Warren gains ground, there’s time for ascendant candidates Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris to get hot. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, is still in the top-tier with a devoted following.

Biden and Harris have both boosted their investments in Iowa recently. The former vice president now has 75 full-time staff on the ground and 12 offices throughout the state, a number they’re planning to more than double by the caucuses. Harris’ team touts 65 staffers and seven offices, and the California senator recently went on the airwaves with an ad focused on her mother and her economic policy.

But Biden’s Iowa swing showcased the challenges that lie ahead for him. The visit was marred by a series of gaffes in which he stumbled over his words or seemed to get the dates wrong on major events.

Some longtime Biden supporters worried he’s lost some of his spark. Greene County Democratic Party Chair Chris Henning said that, in the past, “I was crazy about him.”

“Energy-wise, he looked people in the eye, remembered your name, called your name — and he’s not that Joe Biden anymore,” she said.

If Biden’s worried, he didn’t show it in Iowa. With a smile on his face, he strolled through the state fair, stopping at one point for ice cream.

“You’re gonna see these numbers go up and down and up and down,” Biden said. “All I can do is try to be as authentic as I can.”

Harris’ five-day Iowa tour marked the longest stretch she’s spent in any early-voting state. After a slow summer in which she faced questions about her commitment to the state, Harris said her biggest challenge in Iowa is being relatively unknown.

“There are people in this race that have had national profiles for many years,” she told reporters. “I’m still introducing myself to people.”

Harris impressed her audiences with what retired real estate agent Wendy Ewalt called her “warmth,” after they met on the sidewalk outside Juanita’s restaurant in Storm Lake.

“She has something intangible,” Ewalt said. “She connects.”

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Bernie Sanders, a Vermont senator, also remain strong contenders. Iowa operatives say even as he’s slipped in the polls, Sanders can’t be written off — he’s added a number of seasoned staffers to his team and maintains tens of thousands of volunteers and a strong grassroots network of activists that helped him pull off a surprise near-tie in the 2016 caucuses.

Buttigieg, who has distinguished himself in the field as a gay, married man and a 37-year-old girding for generational change in politics, drew large crowds and began courting Iowans more aggressively in July, after posting an impressive $25 million second quarter fundraising total. That haul has helped bring 60 new staff to Iowa in the past two weeks. His campaign manager, Mike Schmuhl, recently spent four days in Iowa with Buttigieg and held private meetings with staff and key Democrats, as his team works to build up their operation in the state.

Buttigieg drew one of the biggest responses at the Wing Ding dinner, and he’ll have the media spotlight largely to himself when he returns this week for a three-day trip through eastern Iowa counties where Trump won in 2016.

Jeff Link, a veteran Democratic campaign adviser known best for his work for former Sen. Tom Harkin, noted of Buttigieg and Harris that “it seems they are a little more focused on Iowa than maybe they were in the first half of the year.”

But, he added, “The only thing that matters is the fourth quarter.”

The caucuses are famous for their unpredictability. In the fall of 2007, when trailing Hillary Clinton, Obama drew crowds of tens of thousands to college campuses and gave a scorching speech obliquely attacking his rival as too careful. He later notched a historic victory that propelled him to the White House.

Similarly, after leading Iowa into the late summer of 2003, Howard Dean came under attack for a reputation of being angry and untested on the national scene. Following a campaign makeover that fall, John Kerry surged early in 2004 and won the caucuses on his way to the nomination.

Beto O’Rourke is counting on that kind of scenario to lift his struggling campaign. He has dozens of staffers on the ground, 11 field offices and cash stocked away if he’s can break through the crowded field.

Should Harris or Buttigieg flop, there is time for Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar to catch on. Booker, a New Jersey senator, wowed Democrats with his fiery speech at the Wing Ding dinner and has a strong Iowa operation. Klobuchar, a senator from neighboring Minnesota, has played up her Midwestern roots.

“Booker and Klobuchar may catch fire at some point,” former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said. “The big unknown is whether folks drop out and endorse remaining candidates. That could change things dramatically.”

Muslims Clash With Israeli Police at Jerusalem Holy Site

JERUSALEM — Muslim worshippers and Israeli police clashed Sunday at a major Jerusalem holy site during prayers marking the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Palestinian medics said at least 14 people were wounded, one seriously, in the skirmishes with police at the site, which Muslims refer to as the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and Jews refer to as the Temple Mount. Police said at least four officers were wounded. Witnesses said at least two people were arrested.

Clouds of tear gas swirled and stun grenades thundered across the stone-paved esplanade as masses of worshippers skirmished with policein the worst bout of fighting at the contested holy site in months.

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The clashes came amid heightened tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, just days after an Israeli soldier was killed south of Jerusalem. On Saturday, Israeli troops killed four Palestinian militants who attempted to cross the Gaza border fence.

Tens of thousands of Muslims had flocked to the site in Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday for holiday prayers, police said. Jews are also observing on Sunday the Ninth of Av, a day of fasting and mourning for the destruction of the two Biblical temples which stood at the site in antiquity.

The site is the holiest for Jews and the third holiest for Muslims, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, and has long been a flashpoint at the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jordan, which serves as the custodian of the holy site, said in a statement that it had sent a formal complaint to Israel and condemned what it called Israel’s “irresponsible provocations.” Sufian al-Qudah, a spokesman for the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, said Amman holds Israel completely responsible for the violence.

Large numbers of Palestinians had gathered at the gates of the compound early Sunday after rumors circulated that police would allow Jewish visitors to enter the site. The protesters chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) and threw stones at police, who then charged into the compound while firing stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets.

Israeli police had initially barred entry to Jewish visitors, but reversed their decision after the clashes broke out and allowed them to enter. Several dozen entered the site under close police escort and Muslim worshippers began throwing chairs and other objects at the group. The Jewish visitors left the compound shortly thereafter.

Jerusalem District police commander Doron Yedid told Israeli media that the decision to allow Jewish visitors to enter the site was made “with the backing of the top political officials.” Police spokesmen could not be reached for comment.

The reversal came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious nationalist allies called for the site to be opened to Jewish visitors. Israelis are headed to unprecedented repeat elections next month after Netanyahu failed to form a government following April’s elections.

Jews are barred from praying at the compound under a longstanding arrangement between Israel and Muslim authorities. Jewish tradition also maintains that Jews should avoid entering the holy site.

But in recent years Israeli religious nationalists have stepped up visits to the site to challenge the arrangement. Jewish extremists have called for destroying the mosque and rebuilding the Biblical temple.

The Palestinians view such visits as provocations, and have long feared that Israel intends to take over the site or partition it. The Israeli government has repeatedly said it has no intention of changing the status quo.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior leader in the Palestine Liberation Organization, said Israel was “fueling religious tensions in Jerusalem,” adding that Israeli officials are “fully responsible for its grave consequences.”

The compound is in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories the Palestinians seek as part of a future state. Israel views all of Jerusalem as its unified capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Israeli-Palestinian tensions have spiked following President Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. Embassy there. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been moribund for at least a decade, and the Palestinians have cut ties with the Trump administration over what they see as its unfair bias toward Israel.

In a separate incident on Sunday, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian gunman after he opened fire on them from across the perimeter fence around the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said an “armed terrorist” approached the frontier early Sunday and opened fire toward troops on the other side, who responded by shooting at the attacker. The army said a tank also targeted a nearby military post operated by the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza identified the deceased as 26-year-old Marwan Nasser. It was not clear if he was a member of an armed group, and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

On Saturday, Israeli troops killed four Palestinian militants who the army said had tried to carry out a cross-border attack. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, said the attack was an “individual act” carried out by youths frustrated at the Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza and was not planned by the group.

___

Associated Press writer Fares Akram in Gaza City, Gaza Strip contributed.

Mass Shootings Have Latinos Worried About Being Targets

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When Michelle Otero arrived at an art show featuring Mexican-American women, the first thing she did was scan the room. Two exits. One security guard.

Then she thought to herself: If a shooter bursts in, how do my husband and I get out of here alive?

Otero, who is Mexican American and Albuquerque’s poet laureate, had questioned even attending the crowded event at the National Hispanic Cultural Center a day after 22 people were killed in a shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart.

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That shooting and an earlier one in Gilroy, California, killed nearly two dozen Latinos. The violence has some Hispanics looking over their shoulders, avoiding speaking Spanish in public and seeking out escape routes amid fears they could be next.

A huge immigration raid of Mississippi poultry plants on Thursday that rounded up 680 mostly Latino workers, leaving behind crying children searching for their detained parents, also has unnerved the Hispanic community.

The events come against the backdrop of racially charged episodes that include then-candidate Donald Trump referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” Trump, as president, referring to migrants coming to the U.S. as “an invasion” and viral videos of white people chastising Hispanics for speaking Spanish in public.

“It’s almost like we’re hitting a climax of some kind,” said Jennifer Garcia, a 23-year-old University of New Mexico student originally from Mexico. “Some people, especially our elders, don’t even want to leave the house or speak Spanish.”

From Houston to Los Angeles, Latinos have taken to social media to describe being on edge, worrying that even standing in line for a Taco Tuesday special outside a food truck or wearing a Mexican national soccer team jersey might make them a target.

Although the motive in the Gilroy shooting is unknown, authorities say the El Paso shooting suspect, who is white, confessed to targeting people of Mexican descent. The suspect also is believed to have written an anti-Hispanic rant before gunning down mostly Latino Walmart shoppers with an AK-47-style rifle. The attack has rattled a city that has helped shape Mexican-American life in the U.S. for generations.

The manifesto included anti-immigrant and anti-Latino language similar to Trump’s.

Garcia said she has seen widespread anxiety among immigrants since Trump was elected in November 2016 and the angst after the shootings “has reached another level.”

Alexandro Jose Gradilla, a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at California State University, Fullerton, said he and his wife, also a professor, “know anyone can look up a class schedule and start shooting.”

“White supremacists don’t see the difference between immigrants to fourth-generation Latinos,” he said. “They see brown.”

Carlos Galindo-Elvira of the Anti-Defamation League in Arizona said that, in the days after the El Paso shooting, the organization received calls from concerned Hispanics seeking information about white supremacy and the website where the manifesto was posted.

Some worried whether a mass shooting could happen in Phoenix, a city more than 40% Hispanic, Galindo-Elvira said.

“What I tell people is that we cannot live in fear, but we also have to be vigilant and be aware of the rhetoric and our surroundings,” he said.

He said information is important and since last year the league has been training officials at Mexican consulates across the U.S. about how to report hate crimes against their citizens amid the heightened anti-Latino rhetoric.

Still, Erik Contreras, 36, the grandson of Panamanian and Mexican immigrants, said the recent violence has left him nervously checking parking lots where he worries attackers could hit.

“The other day we went to the Oakland Zoo, and I found myself looking for the way out, just in case,” said Contreras, who works at a Union City, California, school and has three children. “I don’t want to live like that. This is our country.”

Otero, the poet, said she tries to make sense of the attacks by replaying facts in her mind.

“This is someone who drove nine hours to kill people like me,” she said of the El Paso shooter, holding back tears. “I don’t know what to make of that.”

In an effort to help, she is organizing a public reading by poets in Albuquerque to raise money for the families of the El Paso victims.

Flaviano Graciano of the immigrant advocacy group New Mexico Dream Team said activists are using the tragedies to organize residents. He says groups are planning forums to help educate Latino immigrants on their rights and how they can protect themselves against violence and anticipated raids.

Sometimes the best way to deal with anti-Hispanic bias is just to stand up to it, said Air Force Senior Airman Xiara Mercado, who grabbed attention on Facebook last month with her story of a woman giving her a hard time for speaking Spanish.

Mercado told The Associated Press that as a member of the military she couldn’t comment on the recent anti-Latino violence. But in her case, after suffering past discrimination, “I finally just decided to speak up.”

She said she remained silent when, years earlier, she was told to “speak American” during a stay in Michigan, then later when a police officer in Indiana questioned the authenticity of her Puerto Rican driver’s license.

But Mercado, 27, said she had enough when she was confronted by a woman as she chatted on the phone in Spanish with a friend from the U.S. territory at a Honolulu Starbucks. The woman told her speaking Spanish was “distasteful” and “does not represent America and that uniform you are wearing.”

In a July 17 Facebook post shared more than 48,000 times, Mercado said she told the women: “The only distasteful thing here is that you are clueless to your discrimination, please educate yourself. Have a nice day.”

The 15th Wing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, confirmed that Mercado is with the 18th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, and backed her up, saying: “The Air Force recognizes our strength comes from diversity.”