Chris Hedges's Blog, page 301

‘Florida Man’ Jokes Are an Excuse to Laugh at the Poor

“Another tedious, liberal, PC scold,” you may think as you read the headline for this piece. “Why can’t we just have fun and enjoy a hilarious meme in peace?” Well, you can enjoy “Florida man” all you want, but by any objective metric, it’s worth noting that “Florida man” memes—just like all “dumb criminal” or “weird crime” stories—are little more than a socially acceptable way of gawking at and belittling the dispossessed and indigent.

At the very least, it’s a possibility worth examining—if you would indulge me. The general premise behind “Florida man” memes and jokes is that Florida, for whatever reason, produces uniquely wacky news stories. It’s an online bit that goes back more than a decade, leading to a popular twitter account, @_floridaman, and thousands of glib internet cracks. Everyone’s in on the joke, especially people from Florida. A recent tweet by @g_pratimaaa, making a game out of the name by typing in one’s birthday, has reignited the meme on Twitter, resulting in write-ups in Time magazine, Tampa Bay Times, NBC Palm Beach, USA Today.

But any cursory survey of “Florida man” stories reveals that the butt of the joke the vast majority of the time isn’t Florida, but simply poor people, typically those with likely drug or mental health problems. So as not to be accused of cherry-picking, I’ve highlighted the “Florida man” stories referenced in the above Tampa Bay Times story:

“Naked Florida man revealed on video sneaking into restaurant and munching on ramen”
“Florida man throws bicycle, then other man off bridge”
“A 71-year-old Florida man tied a gun to a weather balloon to fake his own murder, police say”
“Police: A Florida man thought a neighbor stole his lawn mower, so he set his Corvette on fire”
“Woman tried to start paper towel holder on fire in Tropicana Field bathroom, police say”
“Florida Woman cradles baby alligator in maternity photo shoot”
“Florida man climbs atop playground equipment at Clearwater park, tells kids where babies come from”
“They got married on Clearwater Beach Sunday. Then they got drunk and arrested, police said.”
“Florida man broke into jewelry store, cut himself on glass and bled all over everything, police say”
“St. Pete man gets drunk, falls off bicycle, hits man at hospital with folding chair, police say”
“To get back at co-worker, St. Pete woman took photos of her on the toilet. She now faces charges.”

Look at the details of these stories, the pictures, the neighborhoods where they take place. Without speculating on the specifics of each subject’s mental health or possible addiction status, can anyone honestly argue both aren’t a major component in most of these cases?

Typically, these stories are accompanied by a pretrial mugshot, which often goes viral and— invariably and without fanfare—ruins the reputation of the party being mocked. The cases involve varying degrees of criminality, ranging from innocuous public intoxication arrests to murder, but none of this matters—a zany mugshot and an absurd headline is all that’s wanted. The details or mitigating circumstances are of little import.

In January, for media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, I interviewed three people whose lives had been ruined by viral mugshots. This genre of clickbait may seem trivial or “just for fun,” but these stories involve real human beings with real families and real nuances and complexity and, very often, real mental health or drug problems. And while we may view this type of story as a harmless joke, having spoken to those upended by our viral tabloid story obsession, I can assure you it’s not. Goofy “dumb criminal” stories—the close cousin to “Florida man” stories—in all their iterations feed a culture of indifference toward incarcerated people and the poor.

Two material factors likely lead to “Florida man” being a thing in the first place. First is that Florida’s famously transparent “sunshine laws” make the details of criminal cases easily accessible to journalists. Reporters, desperate for content, can effortlessly search for the most sensational and bias-reinforcing cases. Transparency is laudable, but in these instances, it effectively streamlines and packages the worst aspects of people’s lives for ethically dodgy reporters window-shopping for the grossest headlines.

The second and more morally relevant factor is that Florida is in the midst of a major mental health crisis and has been for a long time. According to the Orlando Sentinel, “Florida ranks 49th among the states for mental-health programs, spending $37.28 per person last year. Mississippi spent four times as much on its mentally ill.” Additionally, according to one life insurance company study, Florida ranks 41st in support for those affected by drug addiction. From its lack of mental health and drug treatment programs to its laws that barred thousands of people from voting due to felony convictions to its push for drug testing the poor for welfare benefits, Florida is notorious for having some of the country’s harshest systems for those on the margins of society.

The reason Florida seems to have more “bizarre news” stories is because it leaves tens of thousands of people with financial, mental health and drug problems to fend for themselves, and then, under the banner of transparency, hands over the inevitable result of this lack of support to a click-hungry press. To paraphrase another viral tweet, it monetizes the rot.

“Florida man” isn’t an accident. It’s the logical byproduct of a state whose politics have been defined by cruel, racist indifference to the poor for decades.

The privileged, as a general rule, love proxy language that permits them to engage in bullying and mockery that would otherwise be socially frowned upon. For decades, white sports writers have criticized “spoiled,” “lazy” basketball players because they can’t openly attack “uppity” blacks—with nary a word on the shortcomings of billionaire white owners. The viral “Thug Kitchen” sensation from five years ago allowed white liberals to openly mock African-American Vernacular English until, one day, we realized it was super racist. White men love to use “white women” as a punchline, frequently as a pseudo-woke means of simply mocking women. I am, I admit, guilty of doing so myself.

We need to be aware of these proxies and what we’re really talking about when we make light of and dehumanize an ostensibly nonracialized, class neutral, gender agnostic target. Are we really mocking Florida, or using it as shorthand for the poor and mentally unwell? Are we creating a culture that values human life or one that takes people’s worst moments and turns them into viral chum?

If you think this is too self-serious and buzzkill-y, fair enough. But while gawking at the dispossessed and mentally unwell, let’s at least be honest and admit that this is what we’re actually doing.

Dems’ Decline of Corporate Money Could Put a Hurt on PACs

“The one thing Democratic candidates for president can agree on” writes Politico’s Zach Montellaro, is that “they’re not taking money from corporate PACs.” A new article from Roll Call suggests that political action committees are getting nervous that anti-big money fervor means their influence is declining in the Democratic Party.

Beto O’Rourke, who raised more money in the first 24 hours after his campaign announcement than any other Democratic presidential candidate, told supporters that this feat proves that his is “a campaign by all of us for all of us that answers not to the PACs, corporations and special interests but to the people,” as Vox reported Monday. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., says he “won’t take a dime from corporate PACs,” a pledge shared by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bernie Sanders of New York, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California and former San Antonio mayor and presidential candidate Julian Castro.

Roll Call’s Kate Ackley reports that attendees at a Florida conference for corporate PACs came “seeking clues about the future of their beleaguered enterprises.” They “run the political action committees of corporations and business associations just when a growing contingent of lawmakers is rejecting their donations,” Ackley writes, noting that one session offered at the conference was titled “Under Siege.”

It is largely Democrats who are rejecting PAC money, Ackley points out. “If the trend spreads into the 2020 campaign cycle, it could put corporations and associations in a bind.”

As Kristin Brackemyre, senior manager of advocacy practice for the Public Affairs Council, explains, “We see some PACs that literally have it written into their bylaws that they will achieve a specific split, whether that’s 50-50 or, for some, it’s 60-40. … It’s not so easy for PACs to say, ‘Well, we’ll just give more money to Republicans.”

But anti-PAC activists wonder why Republicans can’t just say “no” too. Patrick Burgwinkle, spokesman for End Citizens United, told Ackley, “We would like to see Republicans refuse corporate PAC money and put the interests of their constituents ahead of corporate special interests, but we’re not holding our breath.”

PACs are also trying to convince candidates that they’re not the same as super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to campaign independently for candidates for federal office. PACs can only donate $5,000 in a particular election cycle, unlike super PACs, which have no such restrictions as long as they don’t donate directly to a candidate. But PAC money can still support the running of ads, phone banks and other work on behalf of candidates that’s eerily similar to a campaign.

As Splinter’s Libby Watson argues, sometimes it’s not about the specific dollar amounts, but the kind of influence PAC money builds over time: “It may not be to specifically get one politician elected, but getting $5,000 from AT&T’s PAC means they’re far more likely to take AT&T’s call when they want to complain about net neutrality or having to pay taxes.”

Eager to convince candidates to continue accepting their money, and perhaps their influence, PACs are preparing their lobbyists for battle:

One PAC manager who attended the Florida seminar confided that she’d dispatched lobbyists armed with talking points explaining what corporate PACs really are. For example, the money comes from the personal funds of a select group of executive employees and their family members, not corporate treasuries (although companies and associations bear the administrative cost of operating a PAC).

While 2020 Democratic candidates may have rejected corporate PACs, their stance on super PACs is less clear. As Reuters points out, “Klobuchar, Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, Warren and Castro have said they also will discourage single-candidate Super PACs from operating on their behalf,” but “they cannot prevent them from doing so.”

Robert Reich: Trump’s Threats Grow More Ominous by the Day

What does a megalomaniacal president of the United States do when he’s cornered? We’ll soon find out.

House Democrats are beginning a series of investigations and hearings into Donald Trump.

Senate Republicans have begun to desert him: Twelve defected on the wall; seven refused to back Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. In the House, Republicans joined Democrats in a 420-0 vote on a resolution to make Robert Mueller’s report public.

That report, not incidentally, appears imminent.

Trump cannot abide losing. His ego can’t contain humiliation. He is incapable of shame.

So what does a cornered Trump do? For starters, he raises the specter of violence against his political opponents.

In an interview with Breitbart News published Wednesday, Trump noted: “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough – until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

In case you missed it, “they” are Trump’s political opponents, including House Democrats and the mainstream media. And the “certain point” could be impeachment but is more likely to be reached if the House investigations reveal crimes Trump committed both before and after he became president.

“I actually think that the people on the right are tougher,” Trump warned in the same interview. “But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this invest[igations] – that’s all they want to do is – you know, they do things that are nasty.”

Here we have it, in a nutshell. In Trump’s mind, congressional investigations that could cause him shame and humiliation, and quite possibly result in a prison sentence, will be countered by forces loyal to him: the police, the military, and vigilante groups like Bikers for Trump.

To put it another way, the work of a democratically elected Congress will be met by Trump loyalists who, he asserts, are “tougher” because they have brute force on their side.

It is impossible to know what bizarre scenario is playing out in Trump’s head. But another hint came on Friday, when, in the wake of the horrific shootings at two mosques in New Zealand, Trump told reporters he didn’t believe white nationalism is on the rise.

“I don’t really,” he said. “I think it’s a small group of people.”

As usual, the facts are otherwise. The number of hate groups in the US increased 7% last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hate crime reports increased 17%, according to the FBI.

Recall that 11 people were murdered at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on 27 October, at the hands of a white supremacist. A few days earlier, a white supremacist murdered two black people at a grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.

It is hardly the first time Trump has played down white nationalism, or signaled his support for those who might use violence on his behalf.

At a Las Vegas rally during the 2016 campaign he said he’d like to punch a protester in the face; at another event encouraged his supporters to “knock the crap” out of any protester making trouble.

“I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees,” he said.

But as Trump becomes ever more entrapped in the web of his own misdeeds, his threats are becoming more ominous.

At a rally for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley in September, Trump said his opponents “were lucky that we’re peaceful”. He continued: “Law enforcement, military, construction workers, Bikers for Trump … They travel all over the country … They’ve been great.” But, he warned, “these are tough people … they’re peaceful people, and antifa and all, they’d better hope they stay that way.”

In February, the White House Correspondents’ Association called on Trump to make it “absolutely clear to his supporters that violence against reporters is unacceptable”. To date, he has not.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, another of Trump’s bottom feeders, predicted that “2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since the civil war”.

Throughout his campaign and presidency, Trump has given cover to some of the most vile bigots in America. As he grows more desperate, he is giving them encouragement.

It is our job – and the job of all senators and representatives in Congress, regardless of party, and of military leaders – to condemn hatred and violence in all its forms, even when the president of the United States makes excuses for it.

And it is up to all of us to reaffirm our commitment to democracy, even when the president of the United States threatens to unleash the military and vigilantes against it.

Thom Hartmann: America Has Forgotten the Warnings of FDR

America is having a heated debate about the meaning of the word socialism. We’d be better served if, instead, we were debating the meaning of freedom.

The Oregonian reported last week that fully 156,000 families are on the edge of homelessness in our small-population state. Every one of those households is now paying more than 50 percent of its monthly income on rent, and none of them has any savings; one medical bill, major car repair or job loss, and they’re on the streets.

While socialism may or may not solve their problem, the more pressing issue we have is an entire political party and a huge sector of the billionaire class who see homelessness not as a problem, but as a symptom of a “free” society.

“Poverty, lack of education, no access to health care, poor-paying jobs, and barriers to voting are all proof of a free society, they tell us, which is why America’s lowest life expectancy, highest maternal and childhood death rates, lowest levels of education, and lowest pay are almost all in GOP-controlled states.”

The words freedom and liberty are iconic in American culture—probably more so than with any other nation because they’re so intrinsic to the literature, declarations and slogans of our nation’s founding.

The irony—of the nation founded on the world’s greatest known genocide (the systematic state murder of tens of millions of Native Americans) and over three centuries of legalized slavery and a century and a half of oppression and exploitation of the descendants of those slaves—is extraordinary. It presses us all to bring true freedom and liberty to all Americans.

But what do those words mean?

If you ask the Koch brothers and their buddies—who slap those words on pretty much everything they do—you’d get a definition that largely has to do with being “free” from taxation and regulation. And, truth be told, if you’re morbidly rich, that makes a certain amount of sense, particularly if your main goal is to get richer and richer, regardless of your behavior’s impact on working-class people, the environment, or the ability of government to function.

On the other hand, the definition of freedom and liberty that’s been embraced by so-called “democratic socialist” countries—from Canada to almost all of Europe to Japan and Australia—you’d hear a definition that’s closer to that articulated by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he proposed, in January 1944, a “second Bill of Rights” to be added to our Constitution.

FDR’s proposed amendments included the right to a job, and the right to be paid enough to live comfortably; the right to “adequate food and clothing and recreation”; the right to start a business and run it without worrying about “unfair competition and domination by monopolies”; the right “of every family to a decent home”; the right to “adequate medical care… to achieve and enjoy good health”; the right to government-based “protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment”; and the right “to a good education.”

Roosevelt pointed out that, “All of these rights spell security.”

He added, “America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.”

The other nations mentioned earlier took President Roosevelt’s advice to heart. Progressive “social democracy” has kept Europe, Canada, and the developed nations of the East and South Pacific free of war for almost a century—a mind-boggling feat when considering the history of the developed world since the 1500s.

Just prior to FDR winning the White House in the election of 1932, the nation had been treated to 12 years of a bizarre Republican administration that was the model for today’s GOP. In 1920, Warren Harding won the presidency on a campaign of “more industry in government, less government in industry”—privatize and deregulate—and a promise to drop the top tax rate of 91 percent down to 25 percent.

He kept both promises, putting the nation into a sugar-high spin called the Roaring ’20s, where the rich got fabulously rich and working-class people were being beaten and murdered by industrialists when they tried to unionize. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (the three Republican presidents from 1920 to 1932) all cheered on the assaults, using phrases like “the right to work” to describe a union-free nation.

In the end, the result of the “horses and sparrows” economics advocated by Harding (“feed more oats to the horses and there’ll be more oats in the horse poop to fatten the sparrows”—that generation’s version of trickle-down economics) was the Republican Great Depression (yes, they called it that until after World War II).

Even though Roosevelt was fabulously popular—the only president to be elected four times—the right-wingers of his day were loud and outspoken in their protests of what they called “socialist” programs like Social Security, the right to unionize, and government-guaranteed job programs including the WPA, REA, CCC, and others.

The Klan and American Nazis were assembling by the hundreds of thousands nationwide—nearly 30,000 in Madison Square Garden alone—encouraged by wealthy and powerful “economic royalists” preaching “freedom” and “liberty.” Like the Kochs’ Freedomworks, that generation’s huge and well-funded (principally by the DuPonts’ chemical fortune) organization was the Liberty League.

Roosevelt’s generation had seen the results of this kind of hard-right “freedom” rhetoric in Italy, Spain, Japan and Germany, the very nations with which we were then at war.

Speaking of “the grave dangers of ‘rightist reaction’ in this Nation,” Roosevelt told America in that same speech that: “[I]f history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called ‘normalcy’ of the 1920s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.”

Although right-wingers are still working hard to disassemble FDR’s New Deal—the GOP budget for 2019 contains massive cuts to Social Security, as well as to Medicare and Medicaid—we got halfway toward his notion of freedom and liberty here in the United States:

You’re not free if you’re old and deep in poverty, so we have Social Security (although the GOP wants to gut it).
You’re not free if you’re hungry, so we have food stamps/SNAP (although the GOP wants to gut them).
You’re not free if you’re homeless, so we have housing assistance and homeless shelters (although the GOP fights every effort to help homeless people).
You’re not free if you’re sick and can’t get medical care, so we have Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare (although the GOP wants to gut them all).
You’re not free if you’re working more than 40 hours a week and still can’t meet basic expenses, so we have minimum wage laws and the right to unionize (although the GOP wants to gut both).
You’re not free if you can’t read, so we have free public schools (although the GOP is actively working to gut them).
You’re not free if you can’t vote, so we’ve passed numerous laws to guarantee the right to vote (although the GOP is doing everything it can to keep tens of millions of Americans from voting).

The billionaire class and their wholly owned Republican politicians keep trying to tell us that “freedom” means the government doesn’t provide any of the things listed above.

Instead, they tell us (as Ron Paul famously did in a GOP primary debate years ago) that, if we’re broke and sick, we’re “free” to die like a feral dog in the gutter.

Freedom is homelessness, in the minds of the billionaires who own the GOP.

Poverty, lack of education, no access to health care, poor-paying jobs, and barriers to voting are all proof of a free society, they tell us, which is why America’s lowest life expectancy, highest maternal and childhood death rates, lowest levels of education, and lowest pay are almost all in GOP-controlled states.

America—particularly the Democratic Party—is engaged in a debate right now about the meaning of socialism. It would be a big help for all of us if we were, instead, to have an honest debate about the meaning of the words freedom and liberty.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The Washington Post’s Disgraceful Coverage of Medicare-for-All

The phrase “hard-line,” as commonly used in the Washington Post, is almost always a pejorative. Often it references official enemy states like Iran (5/4/18, 5/9/18) or North Korea (1/18/19). In a recent Post (3/11/19) article, however, reporter Paige W. Cunningham used the term to refer to a different kind of enemy: proponents of Medicare for All.

Among the “hard-line liberal groups and unions” the article refers to in its headline and lead is the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities, a coalition of approximately 100 national disability organizations. The “hard-line” groups include much of the grassroots movements for healthcare justice in the country: National Nurses United, Social Security Works and the Center for Popular Democracy.  These orgs—described elsewhere in the piece as “advocates on the far left”—are devoted to such “hard-line” positions as universal healthcare, protecting senior citizens and empowering voters and activists. The Post is concerned that these groups provided input to Rep. Pramila Jayapal as she wrote the Medicare for All legislation (H.R. 1384) she introduced in February.

In fact, what the Post describes as “hard-line” and “far left” is actually a very popular position. Medicare for All has long polled well among the public at large, especially Democratic voters. A Reuters poll from 2018 (The Hill, 8/23/18) showed 70 percent of the public, 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans support Medicare for All.   That poll is the high water mark, but the policy polls well in most other polls as well (Politico/Harvard, 1/7/19).

This popular support was not mentioned by the Post. In fact, the article asserted that the “bill would overhaul the US healthcare system so dramatically that summoning broad public support for it seems like a tall order.” Yet Medicare for All already has broad public support, despite its reputation on K Street and Capitol Hill—and, evidently, in the Washington Post’s newsroom.

The Post article tried to marginalize Medicare for All advocates by contrasting them with more establishment think tanks who helped design Obamacare:

Instead of consulting with influential organizations such as the Center for American Progress or Families USA—two groups deeply involved in the crafting of the 2010 Affordable Care Act—staff for the Washington Democrat invited feedback over the past few months from a slew of groups further to the left.

Both these groups would be odd choices to get input from on a Medicare for All bill, given that neither organization advocates for the policy. Families USA is an especially aggressive advocate for preserving the Affordable Care Act. Families USA founder Ron Pollack was quoted by Third Way (5/4/18)—a corporate-funded group devoted to pushing Democrats to the right—in an essay about why Democrats should avoid the single-payer issue.

Cunningham failed to observe that the Center for American Progress has received donations from the likes of Blue Cross Blue Shield, CVS Caremark and Americans Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the largest insurance lobby in the country (Politico, 12/13/13).

The implication from Cunningham—who has been critiqued for parroting right-wing talking points by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters (2/15/18)—is that there are acceptably mainstream policies like the ACA, backed by acceptably mainstream groups like CAP. Jayapal and others, on the other hand, are going “a step (or steps) too far” with Medicare for All, “as it would upend health coverage for tens of millions of Americans”—according “to some progressives.”

Assuredly “some progressives” disagree with the Medicare for All policy. It is also true that “some conservatives” agree with the policy.  In fact, you can put the word “some” before virtually any demographic group and be correct. Given the volume of information about this issue available, it is hard to believe the Post could not be bothered to put these vague terms in context. Who are these progressives? Voters or politicians? Do they get money from the industry? There was no information about any of that.

Blatant Falsehoods

The Post article has several factual inaccuracies, including the kicker to the “some progressives” passage, which claimed Medicare for All “could cost many times more than the ACA.”

Almost anything could happen, theoretically, but this is a misleading statement at best. If by “cost” Cunningham means only government expenditures, then it’s almost tautological, since the point of single-payer is to shift healthcare funding from private to public insurance.

If she’s using “cost” in a more meaningful sense—as in, how much do we as a society spend on healthcare?—there is really no evidence to support the idea that single-payer would cost more than the ACA. The ACA had very little cost containment at all. The US currently spends 18 percent of GDP and rising—the most in the world, by far—on healthcare. Under the most optimistic CBO projections (3/20/10) for Obamacare, at its best it would leave 22 million uncovered, and costs would continue to rise (if at a lower rate). A more recent analysis from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (2/15/17) “projects the health share of GDP to rise from 17.8 percent in 2015 to 19.9 percent by 2025.”

Contrarily, single-payer systems—as seen around the world—are far less expensive, due to savings on administrative waste and better bargaining power for drug prices.  In fact, these savings are what make universal, comprehensive care possible. The cost effectiveness of Medicare for All is its main attraction. Even the the Mercatus study (with its ties to the Koch brothers) said Medicare for All would cost $2 trillion less over 10 years than what we are projected to pay now (The Nation, 7/31/18).

The Post mentions the new bill would use “global budgets,” and claims this would “open…the door for hospitals in different parts of the country to receive different payments for the same service.”  The problem, as the national advocacy group Healthcare-Now! explains in a tweet, is that the global budgets, by design, don’t use a pay-for-service model with hospitals.  

“The whole point of moving to global budgets is that you’re no longer paying hospitals per service, which she herself notes earlier in the paragraph,” Ben Day, the executive director of HealthCare Now!, explained to FAIR.

Critics of single-payer often claim the polls are misleading because “voters don’t understand how such a system would work” (Forbes, 3/19/18). Their understanding of the issue is not likely to improve after reading the Post’s coverage.

Trump: U.S. Recognizes Israel’s Sovereignty of Golan Heights

JERUSALEM—President Donald Trump said Thursday that it’s time for the United States to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, an announcement that signals a shift in U.S. policy and comes ahead of the Israeli prime minister’s planned visit next week to the White House.

The administration has been considering recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. Last week, in its annual human rights report, the State Department dropped the phrase “Israeli-occupied” from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it “Israeli-controlled.”

“After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!” Trump tweeted.

Minutes later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted his appreciation. “At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump!”

In addition to its policies toward the Palestinians, the U.S. has taken a hard line toward Iran, much to Netanyahu’s delight.

Trump’s announcement came as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Jerusalem, lauding warm ties with Israel and promising to step up pressure on Iran. Pompeo’s words gave a public boost to the Israeli leader at the height of a tight re-election campaign. Netanyahu is to be in Washington for two days next week — two weeks before Israel’s April 9 ballot.

Standing together in Jerusalem Thursday, neither Netanyahu nor Pompeo mentioned the heated Israeli election campaign. But Netanyahu, facing a tough challenge from a popular former military chief and reeling from a series of corruption allegations, has repeatedly sought to focus attention on his foreign policy record and strong ties with Trump.

Pompeo has said his trip has nothing to do with politics.

Netanyahu thanked Pompeo for the Trump administration’s strong stance against Iran, which Israel regards as an existential threat.

Netanyahu has accused Iran of attempting to set up a terrorist network to target Israel from the Golan Heights, using the incident to repeat his goal of international recognition for Israel’s claim on the area.

“You could imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan,” he said. “You would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.”

Pompeo paid a solemn visit Thursday to Jerusalem’s Western Wall along with Netanyahu in an apparent sign of support for Israel’s control of the contested city.

Pompeo is the highest-ranking American official to tour the holy site with any Israeli leader. His visit was likely to further infuriate the Palestinians, who already have severed ties with the U.S. over its Jerusalem policies.

Pompeo and Netanyahu prayed at the wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, before depositing written prayers in its crevices and then touring nearby tunnels and synagogue. Neither made any public comment at the site.

The secretary said he thought it was important to visit the wall with the Israeli leader as a show of support for Israel.

“I think it’s symbolic that a senior American official go there with a prime minister of Israel,” he said before making the trip. “It’s a place that’s important to many faiths and I’m looking forward to it. I think it will be very special.”

Israel captured east Jerusalem and the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war, and for decades, U.S. officials refrained from visiting the Western Wall with Israeli leaders to avoid the appearance of recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the city’s most sensitive holy sites. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

But the Trump administration has upended the longstanding policy, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem last year after recognizing the city as Israel’s capital. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital.

Senior U.S. officials, including Trump and numerous predecessors, have visited the wall privately in the past, but never with an Israeli leader.

The Old City is home to Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy sites, including the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where tradition says Jesus was entombed and resurrected. Pompeo, a devout Christian, also stopped at the church.

Next to the Western Wall is a hilltop compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The spot, which once housed the biblical Temples, is the holiest site in Judaism and today is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.

The competing claims to the site are a frequent source of tension and lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he said it did not determine the city’s final borders. But the gesture was perceived as unfairly siding with Israel and prompted the Palestinians to sever ties with the U.S. The Palestinians already have rejected a planned Mideast peace initiative by the administration.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Pompeo’s visit added additional obstacles to peace hopes. “While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve,” he said.

While previous secretaries of state have traditionally met with the Palestinians when visiting the region, Pompeo has no such talks planned.

“The Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side. We need to help them figure out how to do that,” Pompeo said. “It’s a fact, and this administration wishes well for the Palestinian people.”

In addition to the Jerusalem recognition, the administration also has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians, helping fuel a financial crisis for Abbas’ Palestinian Authority.

At a meeting with Pompeo, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin expressed his deep concern about the Palestinians, both in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and under the internationally backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

“If the Palestinian Authority will collapse, we will have to take care about what is going on,” he said.

___

Riechmann reported from Washington.

More Than 500 Dead in Flooding in Southern Africa

CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe—A week after Cyclone Idai lashed southern Africa, flooding still raged Thursday as torrential rains caused a dam to overflow in Zimbabwe, threatening riverside populations. The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 500, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged.

Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone.

Spokesman Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program told reporters in Geneva of the “alarming news” that the Marowanyati dam in Zimbabwe was hit by heavy rains overnight, putting populations in the region at risk.

Zimbabwe’s defense minister said more than 120 bodies had been washed into neighboring Mozambique, where residents there buried them, and more bodies were still being recovered in rivers, raising the official death toll in the country to 259.

“Most of the bodies were washed into Mozambique and because they were in a really bad state, they could not keep the bodies,” Defense Minister Oppah Muchinguri said, speaking in the eastern city of Mutare. “So they ended up burying them.”

Meanwhile, the confirmed death toll in Mozambique rose to 217, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported, and in Malawi, at least 56 people were killed. But that was sure to rise. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has estimated that 1,000 people could have been killed in his country alone. Zimbabwean officials have said some 350 people may have died in their country.

Homes, villages and entire towns were submerged across central Mozambique, where flooding created a muddy inland ocean 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide. The U.N. food aid agency said 400,000 people were displaced and “in urgent need of life-saving assistance” in Mozambique’s coastal city of Beira and flooded areas along the Pungue and Buzi rivers.

The persistent rains lifted in some areas on Thursday, and floodwaters began to recede in Beira, the worst-hit city, and in the countryside, according to a Mozambican government report.

“Yesterday, 910 people were rescued by the humanitarian community,” said Caroline Haga of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Beira. She said 210 were rescued by five helicopters and 700 were saved by boats.

Aid groups were continuing to work non-stop to rescue families desperately clinging to tree branches and rooftops for safety from the surging waters.

“A family saw their brick house swept away from them. When they went to another house for safety, the roof collapsed,” Machiel Pouw, Save the Children’s response team leader in Mozambique, said in a statement. “Another family fled for safety in a tree. There are tens of thousands of heartbreaking stories like this, lives shattered over the past days.”

It will be days before Mozambique’s inundated plains drain toward the Indian Ocean and even longer before the full scale of the devastation is known.

WFP said Malawi’s government had reported more than 920,000 people in the country were affected by the floods. The agency said Idai had had a “limited impact” on Malawi, and projected that the number of affected people will decline as they return home.

In Zimbabwe, 90 percent of the district of Chimanimani — the country’s hardest-hit — was significantly damaged, the agency said, estimating that 200,000 people would need food assistance over the next three months.

Aid has been slow to reach affected villagers due to collapsed infrastructure, although the military has been handing out small packets of cooking oil, maize meal and beans.

In Chimanimani, Philemon Dada began rebuilding his life in what was once a picturesque town. With a machete and a hoe, he salvaged poles from the mud to construct a hut to shelter his family, a first step in what he sees as a long and backbreaking journey to rebuild a life shattered by Cyclone Idai.

He is one of many villagers trying to pick up the pieces in Chimanimani after losing homes, livestock and, in many instances, family members. Some have been taken in by neighbors and others are sheltering with church pastors.

“I can say I am a bit lucky. My wife and son are still here with me but for everything else, I have to start from scratch,” he said.

Dada had a few food items handed out by the Zimbabwe military, but he knew that wouldn’t last long and he was eager to start growing crops again. Like many people here, he survives on agriculture.

“My bean crop was ready for harvesting before the cyclone, the maize was close. I am back to zero,” he said.

He is particularly pained by his two prized bulls that did the heavy work of drawing the plow for his field. They died in the floods.

“It may take a year, maybe even more years just to get back on my feet,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

Billionaire Philanthropist Faces Multiple Allegations of Sexual Misconduct

This story was co-published with The New York Times.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom based in New York. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

Sheila Katz was a young executive at Hillel International, the Jewish college outreach organization, when she was sent to visit the philanthropist Michael H. Steinhardt, a New York billionaire. He had once been a major donor, and her goal was to persuade him to increase his support. But in their first encounter, he asked her repeatedly if she wanted to have sex with him, she said.

Deborah Mohile Goldberg worked for Birthright Israel, a nonprofit co-founded by Steinhardt, when he asked her if she and a female colleague would like to join him in a threesome, she said.

Natalie Goldfein, an officer at a small nonprofit that Steinhardt had helped establish, said he suggested in a meeting that they have babies together.

Steinhardt, 78, a retired hedge fund founder, is among an elite cadre of donors who bankroll some of the country’s most prestigious Jewish nonprofits. His foundations have given at least $127 million to charitable causes since 2003, public filings show.

But for more than two decades, that generosity has come at a price. Six women said in interviews with The New York Times and ProPublica, and one said in a lawsuit, that Steinhardt asked them to have sex with him, or made sexual requests of them, while they were relying on or seeking his support. He also regularly made comments to women about their bodies and their fertility, according to the seven women and 16 other people who said they were present when Steinhardt made such comments.

“Institutions in the Jewish world have long known about his behavior, and they have looked the other way,” said Katz, 35, a vice president at Hillel International. “No one was surprised when I shared that this happened.”

Steinhardt declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, he said he regretted that he had made comments in professional settings through the years “that were boorish, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.” Those comments, he said, were always meant humorously.

“In my nearly 80 years on earth, I have never tried to touch any woman or man inappropriately,” Steinhardt said in his statement. Provocative comments, he said, “were part of my schtick since before I had a penny to my name, and I unequivocally meant them in jest. I fully understand why they were inappropriate. I am sorry.”

But through a spokesman, Steinhardt denied many of the specific actions or words attributed to him by the seven women.

A lifelong New Yorker, Steinhardt has given millions to city institutions. NYU Steinhardt is New York University’s largest graduate school, with programs in education, communication and health. There is a Steinhardt conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and a Steinhardt gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But he wields his widest influence in the tight-knit world of Jewish philanthropy.

Along with Charles Bronfman, a billionaire heir to the Seagram liquor fortune, Steinhardt founded Birthright Israel, which has sent more than 600,000 young Jews on free trips to Israel. He spearheaded the creation of a network of Hebrew charter schools. A new natural history museum in Tel Aviv bears his name.

While Steinhardt has been celebrated for his largess, interviews with dozens of people depict a man whose behavior went largely unchecked for years because of his status and wealth.

None of the women interviewed by the Times and ProPublica said Steinhardt touched them inappropriately, but they said they felt pressured to endure demeaning sexual comments and requests out of fear that complaining could damage their organizations or derail their careers. Witnesses to the behavior said nothing or laughed along, women said.

“He set a horrifying standard of what women who work in the Jewish community were expected to endure,” said Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi, a Jewish scholar. She said that Steinhardt suggested that she become his concubine while he was funding her first rabbinical position in the mid-1990s.

The spokesman, Davidson Goldin, said Steinhardt had never “seriously, credibly” asked anyone for sex.

Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who was the president of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life for a decade, said he repeatedly rebuked Steinhardt for using belittling language toward both men and women. That tension was a factor in his deciding to leave the job in 2007.

Steinhardt could be harsh with men, but his comments to women focused on their appearance and fertility, Greenberg said. When Steinhardt talked to women, the rabbi said, “the implication was that they were not on par with men.”

He said that the comments were made in a bantering, not threatening, tone and that he never saw Steinhardt directly proposition anyone. Still, he said, “I understand that the women felt more shaken or threatened than I recognized at the time.”

Katz said she was hoping Steinhardt would become a funder of her work at Hillel when she met with him in his Fifth Avenue office in 2015 to interview him for a video Hillel had commissioned about Jewish entrepreneurs. But she said that as the filming got underway, he repeatedly asked if she would have sex with the “king of Israel,” which he had told her was his preferred title for the video. He then asked her directly to have sex with him, she said.

When she turned him down, he brought in two male employees and offered a million dollars if she were to marry one of them, she said. After the filming ended, Steinhardt told her it was an “abomination” that a woman who looked like her was not married and said he would not fund her projects until she returned with a husband and child, said Katz, who has not previously spoken publicly about the incident.

Through his spokesman, Steinhardt denied most of the details of Katz’s story and said he did not “proposition” anyone. Goldin said Steinhardt was not aware that Katz was courting him as a donor when they met.

Katz said she was shaken and reported the comments the next day to Eric D. Fingerhut, the chief executive officer of Hillel. He apologized and promised that she would not have to meet with Steinhardt again, she said. Hillel confirmed generally that Katz reported the incident but would not comment on specifics.

Hillel continued to accept donations from Steinhardt until last year, when it hired a law firm to conduct an investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The investigation, which ended in January, concluded that Steinhardt had sexually harassed Katz and another employee in a separate incident. The findings, which were communicated to Hillel staff in an internal memo that did not name Katz or Steinhardt, were first reported in The New York Jewish Week, a community newspaper that has reported on some allegations against Steinhardt.

A Brash Boss. A Big Benefactor.

Steinhardt, who grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was known for his intelligence and a combative management style when he ran his hedge fund, Steinhardt Partners, which he closed in 1995. In interviews, Steinhardt’s supporters acknowledged he could sometimes be brash and crude, especially when talking about a signature interest: the survival of the Jewish people.

Some of Steinhardt’s most prominent philanthropic efforts are centered on encouraging Jews to marry other Jews and strengthen their ties to the community. He has said his efforts have been driven by the losses of the Holocaust as well as by more contemporary concerns about the effects of intermarriage and secularization.

Steinhardt, who is married with three adult children, is known to goad single Jews into kissing, dating or marrying, and to insist that Jewish women have children, sometimes offering money or the use of a Caribbean home as an incentive, dozens of people said.

“Michael is very passionate, and he is passionate in everything,” Abraham H. Foxman, a longtime friend of Steinhardt’s and the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, said of Steinhardt’s matchmaking. “Call it a passion, call it an obsession, call it a perversion. Some may. I don’t — I understand it. It’s just the way it comes out, which may disturb people.” He said he had never witnessed Steinhardt asking women to have sex and would not expect it of him.

But the behavior described by the women in interviews went well beyond matchmaking.

Goldberg, the director of communications for Birthright from 2001 to 2010, said she was used to Steinhardt being “inappropriate.” Still, she was shocked when Steinhardt suggested that she and a co-worker at a donor reception in Jerusalem join him in an intimate encounter.

Goldberg recalled Steinhardt asking for a threesome; her former colleague, who asked not to be identified, recalled Steinhardt inviting her and Goldberg to leave with him, but did not recall his referring to a threesome.

“We were working Joes, pretty vulnerable, and here he is with all his authority, coming over and propositioning us,” Goldberg, who is now 48, said.

Steinhardt’s spokesman called the account “simply not true.”

Two women who worked at a small Jewish nonprofit recalled Steinhardt using similar language in 2008. They both said that during a meeting at his office to make a pitch for funding, Steinhardt suggested that they all take a bath together, in what he called a “ménage à trois.” One of the women, the executive director of the organization, asked that her identity be withheld because she feared that people on her board would pull their donations if she spoke publicly.

Her former colleague asked that her identity be withheld to protect the executive director.

Steinhardt did not recall this meeting, his spokesman said.

Goldberg said she believed her encounter took place in 2005. She said that soon after, she shared her account with Shimshon Shoshani, who was then Birthright’s chief executive officer.

Shoshani, who later became the director general of Israel’s Education Ministry and is now retired, said in an interview that he did not recall Goldberg’s allegations. He said he had heard “rumors” that Steinhardt had made inappropriate comments, but said he never heard Steinhardt make such comments.

He praised Steinhardt for his commitment to Birthright. “I appreciate him very, very much. Even if there were some comments, about sex, about women, I wouldn’t take it seriously,” Shoshani said, “because he made important decisions in other areas concerning Birthright.”

Steinhardt has given about $25 million to Birthright, public filings show.

Out of Bounds

While Hillel and Birthright are among the nation’s most well-known Jewish nonprofits, Steinhardt also has given millions of dollars to smaller organizations. Some women who worked at these places described being particularly dependent on his favor.

Goldfein, now 58 and a Chicago-based consultant to nonprofits, said Steinhardt repeatedly made inappropriate comments to her between 2000 and 2002, when she worked as the national program director of Synagogue Transformation and Renewal, a nonprofit he co-founded in 1999 and to which he was giving about $250,000 a year, public filings showed.

Still, she was surprised when, during one meeting at his office to brief him about the organization, he suggested that he could set her up in a Park Avenue apartment and that they could have redheaded babies together, Goldfein said.

She said she felt demeaned by his treatment but tried to make light of the comments because Steinhardt was a director of her organization.

“I always felt that it was like a game to him and that I had to put up with it and play along. But it wasn’t an equal playing field,” Goldfein said. She said his behavior left her disillusioned with the job.

Steinhardt disputed her account. He denied “ever saying anything that was intended to ask anyone to have sex with him,” Goldin said.

After requesting an interview with Steinhardt, the Times received unsolicited praise for his warmth and generosity from former and current employees and some prominent friends, including Bronfman; Martin Peretz, the former owner of The New Republic; and Betsy Gotbaum, the former New York City public advocate.

Some acknowledged his tendency to make bawdy or inappropriate comments, but said Steinhardt was always speaking in jest.

“Michael has his unique sense of humour,” Bronfman wrote. “He loves to tease males and females, and certainly his very good friends. I can attest to that! Always has. But to conjure up intentions that he never had or has is more than a disservice. It’s downright outrageous!”

Shifra Bronznick, a consultant to nonprofits, said she was criticized by her colleagues in 2004 after publicly admonishing Steinhardt for commenting on a woman’s fertility at a conference. She said she believed that his comments were hurting women and their careers in a way that his supporters may not have realized.

“When people say bad things about Jews, our community leaders are on red alert about the dangers of anti-Semitism,” she said. “But when people harass women verbally instead of physically, we are asked to accept that this is the price we have to pay for the philanthropic resources to support our work.”

Steinhardt’s behavior stretches back to at least the mid-1990s, said Sabath, who recalled visiting him in his office during the 1995-96 academic year as one of the first Steinhardt Fellows at a rabbinical leadership institute.

She was 27 years old, and it was the first time she had met Steinhardt. He harangued her about being unmarried and said she should put her vagina and womb “to work,” Sabath said. He then suggested she become a “pilegesh,” an ancient Hebrew word for concubine, she said.

Taken aback, Sabath said she tried to engage Steinhardt in a discussion about the centuries-old practice of concubinage, which he said should be reinstituted. When an associate of Steinhardt’s walked into the office, Steinhardt told Sabath she should consider having sex with him, she said. Then Steinhardt proposed that she should become his own concubine.

“I have never uttered the word pilegesh, and don’t even know how to pronounce it,” Steinhardt said, through his spokesman. He also denied saying that Sabath should put her vagina and womb “to work.”

Another woman who was a fellow at the institute at the time, Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses, said she did not witness that conversation. But she said Steinhardt had separately suggested, in a meeting at his office that year, that she should date a married rabbi at the institute. She said she and Sabath complained to Greenberg about Mr. Steinhardt’s comments.

Greenberg, who at the time was president of the institute, recalled the conversation. He said he told Steinhardt that his behavior was “out of bounds.”

“It doesn’t excuse it and it doesn’t justify it, but I don’t believe that he seriously was recruiting Rachel to be his concubine,” Greenberg said. “It’s typical outlandishness.”

Sabath, who is now 50, went on to become a professor of Jewish thought and director of admissions at the nation’s largest Reform Jewish seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. But the experience lingered. For more than two decades, she said, she avoided being in the same room with Steinhardt and could not bring herself to teach about the Torah’s concept of concubines.

She said she did not come forward earlier because she feared for her career and because Steinhardt was a “great benefactor” who supported values in which she believed. “But his being a megafunder can’t allow for, or excuse this behavior, and it has,” Sabath said.

External Scrutiny

None of the six women interviewed by the Times and ProPublica had ever spoken publicly about their experiences, but in recent years, Steinhardt’s behavior has faced some external scrutiny.

Though he was not named as a defendant, he appeared in two sexual harassment lawsuits filed in state court in Manhattan, in 2012 and 2013, against an Upper East Side art gallery.

Two women who worked at the gallery alleged that Steinhardt often made sexually loaded comments to them, which they were expected to endure because he was an important client. Steinhardt is a prominent collector of antiquities.

Karen Simons, an employee, said in her 2013 lawsuit that in one instance, Steinhardt asked over the phone whether her husband satisfied her and asked her to have sex with him, the suit alleged. In a deposition taken in Simons’ case, Steinhardt said he did not remember making sexual remarks to the two women.

Court documents indicated that Simons’ lawsuit was discontinued in November 2017; the other was settled in 2014. Both suits “were resolved amicably with confidentiality agreements,” said the women’s lawyer, Jeffrey D. Pollack. A lawyer for the gallery, Electrum, which is also known as Phoenix Ancient Art, did not respond to requests for comment.

Goldin, the spokesman for Steinhardt, did not directly address the allegations in the lawsuits, but pointed out that a judge had sanctioned Simons for destroying evidence during the course of her suit. He added that Steinhardt had played no role in the resolution of either case.

Last year, as Hillel International conducted an investigation into Steinhardt’s behavior, the organization did not pursue a $50,000 donation he had pledged, and removed his name from its international board of governors, an advisory board for major donors, according to the person with knowledge of the investigation.

On Jan. 15, lawyers from Cozen O’Connor, the firm conducting the investigation, met with Katz to tell her they had found her complaint against Steinhardt justified, said Debra Katz, Katz’s lawyer, who attended the meeting. She is not related to her client.

The investigators also said a second Hillel employee had come forward during the investigation with a complaint that Steinhardt had made an inappropriate comment to her, Debra Katz said.

Steinhardt apologized “promptly” in 2011 when he found out he had offended this woman, his spokesman said. Steinhardt said in a statement that if he had been told at the time about Katz’s complaint, he would have apologized immediately.

“It pains us greatly that anyone in the Hillel movement could be subjected to any form of harassment,” said the organization’s Jan. 11 memo to employees, signed by Fingerhut and Tina Price, the chairwoman of the board of directors.

Katz, who still works for Hillel, said she decided to speak publicly in part because her role in the Hillel investigation had become known and she feared possible fallout. Her lawyer complained to Hillel in January that people using Katz’s name had called members of its board, upset about the investigation. Hillel declined to comment.

“I want to let other women who went through similar things to know that they are not alone,” Katz said. “And I want organizations, and in particular Jewish organizations who take his money, to consider the impact that’s had on people like me.”

Beto O’Rourke Owes His Career to the GOP

To understand Beto O’Rourke as a candidate, it’s vital to go beneath the surface of his political backstory. News watchers are already well aware of the former Texas congressman’s good looks, charisma, youthful energy and fundraising prowess. But most remain unaware of an inconvenient truth that could undermine the O’Rourke campaign among the people who matter most — the ones who’ll be voting to choose the Democratic presidential nominee next year.

O’Rourke is hardly eager for those upcoming voters to realize that the growth of his political career is rooted in an alliance with powerful Republicans that began 15 years ago. Or that he supported raising the minimum age for Social Security in 2012. Or that — during six years in Congress, through the end of 2018 — he often aligned himself with Republican positions.

If facts matter, such weighty facts could sink the “Beto for America” presidential campaign. Since his announcement, information gaining traction nationwide runs directly counter to the Beto brand.

“Before becoming a rising star in the Democratic Party,” the Wall Street Journal reported a week ago, “Beto O’Rourke relied on a core group of business-minded Republicans in his Texas hometown to launch and sustain his political career. To win their backing, Mr. O’Rourke opposed Obamacare, voted against Nancy Pelosi as the House Democratic leader and called for a raise in the Social Security eligibility age.”

Meanwhile, a Washington Post news article — under the headline “Beto O’Rourke’s Political Career Drew on Donations From the Pro-Republican Business Establishment” — also foreshadowed a bumpy ride on the campaign trail. In the eyes of most people who don’t like the GOP, key points in the Post’s reporting are apt to be concerning. For instance:

● “Several of El Paso’s richest business moguls donated to and raised money for O’Rourke’s city council campaigns, drawn to his support for a plan to redevelop El Paso’s poorer neighborhoods. Some later backed a super PAC that would play a key role in helping him defeat an incumbent Democratic congressman.”

● “O’Rourke worked on issues that had the potential to make money for some of his benefactors. His support as a council member for the redevelopment plan, which sparked controversy at the time because it involved relocating low-income residents, many of them Hispanic, coincided with property investments by some of his benefactors.”

● “As a congressman, he supported a $2 billion military funding increase that benefited a company controlled by another major donor. That donor, real estate developer Woody Hunt, was friends with O’Rourke’s late father. Hunt also co-founded and funds an El Paso nonprofit organization that has employed O’Rourke’s wife since 2016.”

Central features of Trumpism are budgets that add billions to already-bloated Pentagon spending while cutting essential programs. In Beto’s last year in Congress, when nearly one-third of House Democrats opposed the record-breaking 2019 National Defense Authorization Act of $717 billion, Beto voted with Trump. (Four senators who are running against O’Rourke voted no: Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.)

Overall, the Post reports, “in contrast to the aspirational image he has fostered in recent years,” O’Rourke’s political career has gone along a path of “winning support from a typically pro-GOP business establishment interested in swaying public policy. Born into one politically potent family and married into another, he benefited repeatedly from his relationships with El Paso’s most powerful residents, including several nationally known Republican money men.”

To put his more conservative actions in context, O’Rourke cannot plausibly claim that he was striving to be in sync with the voters who elected him. El Paso and the House district that O’Rourke represented are heavily Democratic. The Wall Street Journal summed up this way: “In a one-party town — the Democrats have held El Paso’s congressional seat for all but one term since 1902 — local Republicans viewed Mr. O’Rourke as one of their own.”

Naturally, O’Rourke would much rather talk in upbeat generalities than answer pointed questions about why anti-Republican voters should cast ballots for him — when he has a long record of going along with many GOP positions they find abhorrent. It may be better for him if unflattering coverage fixates instead on matters like youthful stints as a punk rocker and early computer hacker.

It was just seven years ago when — during his first run for Congress — O’Rourke did a campaign video to tell people in the blue West Texas district that “we’ll have to look at future generations . . . retiring at a later age, paying a greater percentage of their income into Social Security and making other necessary adjustments.” And, the Wall Street Journal reports, “in a candidate questionnaire published two days before the May 2012 primary, Mr. O’Rourke called for raising the Social Security eligibility age and means-testing federal entitlements.” According to exit polling, O’Rourke won that election with major help from Republicans who opted to vote in the Democratic primary and cast their ballots for him by a ratio of more than 7 to 1.

After becoming a congressman, O’Rourke backtracked and, as Politico reports, “co-sponsored legislation that would increase Social Security benefits — without raising the retirement age.” Yet his wobbly stance on Social Security in this decade is a warning flag.

O’Rourke affinity with Republican sensibilities related to corporate power has continued. So has largesse from interests that are the antithesis of progressive values. Notably, for his final term, Beto retired from the House as the member of Congress who was the second-highest recipient of campaign cash from the oil and gas industry.

In June 2015, O’Rourke was one of only 28 Democrats — out of 188 members of the party in the House — who voted to give President Obama the power to negotiate the corporate-oriented Trans-Pacific Partnership. The measure squeaked through the House, propelled by support from 190 Republicans.

A year later, the TPP was a highly visible and contentious issue at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, where hundreds of Bernie Sanders delegates held anti-TPP signs. (I was one of those delegates and still support Sanders.) These days, O’Rourke is typically aiming to have it both ways, as Vanity Fair reported in a campaign kickoff cover story last week: “O’Rourke now says he would have voted ‘no’ on the ultimate agreement. But in 2015, he traveled with Obama on a trip to Asia to help build support for the deal.”

At the end of last year, the Guardian published an exhaustively researched article under the headline “Beto O’Rourke Frequently Voted for Republican Legislation, Analysis Reveals.” The piece reported that “even as O’Rourke represented one of the most solidly Democratic congressional districts in the United States, he has frequently voted against the majority of House Democrats in support of Republican bills and Trump administration priorities.”

Written by investigative journalist David Sirota (who days ago joined the Sanders presidential campaign as a speechwriter), the Dec. 20 article reviewed “the 167 votes O’Rourke has cast in the House in opposition to the majority of his own party during his six-year tenure in Congress. Many of those votes were not progressive dissents alongside other left-leaning lawmakers, but instead votes to help pass Republican-sponsored legislation.”

A cautionary tale comes from David Romo, an activist and historian in El Paso who describes Beto O’Rourke as a “masterful politician. . . It’s all fluff, it’s all style, it’s all looks.” Romo clashed with City Councilman O’Rourke when he went all-out for redevelopment that would enrich some of his wealthy backers. Romo said recently: “O’Rourke, because of his charisma, can kind of pull off some of this behind-the-scenes power peddling. He was the pretty face in the really ugly gentrification plan that negatively affected the most vulnerable people in El Paso.”

To the casual listener, however, O’Rourke might sound lovely. Consider this verbiage from the presidential campaign trail: “We want to be for everybody, work with everybody. Could care less about your party affiliation or any other difference that might otherwise divide us at this moment of truth, where I really feel we will either make or break this great country and our democracy.”

From O’Rourke, that kind of talk has sometimes overlapped with disinterest in defeating Republicans. Last year, while running for the Senate, O’Rourke helped a friend in need — Texas GOP Congressman Will Hurd — by notably refusing to endorse his Democratic opponent.  Gina Ortiz Jones, a gay Filipina-American, had momentum in a district with a majority of Hispanics. But O’Rourke’s solidarity with his Republican colleague may well have saved Hurd’s seat.

Hurd won re-election by under one-half of a percentage point, while O’Rourke won in the district by a five-point margin. As the New York Times reported, O’Rourke “had elevated” his Republican colleague Hurd “with frequent praise and, most memorably, a live-streamed bipartisan road trip that helped jump-start their midterm campaigns.” During the campaign, O’Rourke tried to justify his refusal to endorse Hurd’s Democratic opponent by declaring: “This is a place where my politics and my job and my commitment to this country come into conflict. I’m going to put country over party.”

When Politico asked O’Rourke late last year whether he considered himself to be a progressive Democrat, O’Rourke replied: “I don’t know. I’m just, as you may have seen and heard over the course of the campaign, I’m not big on labels. I don’t get all fired up about party or classifying or defining people based on a label or a group. I’m for everyone.”

Everyone?

After O’Rourke campaigned in the Detroit area a few days ago, the Detroit Metro Times published information that would concern anyone with minimally progressive leanings: “He supported Republican efforts to limit the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was established by Obama and Democrats to protect Americans from Wall Street following the recession. O’Rourke also broke with the party to support Trump and GOP attempts to loosen requirements in hiring border patrol agents; chip away at the Affordable Care Act; kill a ban on oil drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico; and lift the 40-year-old oil export ban. He also supported Republican legislation that protected utility companies that start wildfires.”

It’s understandable that many progressives came out of 2018 with a favorable view of O’Rourke. He ran a strong campaign that got remarkably close to unseating the odious Sen. Ted Cruz. Along the way, O’Rourke showed himself to be eloquent and tireless. Some of his stances are both enlightened and longstanding, as with his advocacy for legalizing marijuana. And O’Rourke provided some stunning moments of oratory, as in a viral video that showed his response to a question about NFL players kneeling in protest during the national anthem; his support for dissent in the context of civil rights history was exemplary.

Yet, overall, there’s a good reason why O’Rourke declines to call himself “progressive.” He isn’t. His alliances and sensibilities, when you strip away some cultural affinities and limited social-justice positions, are bedrock corporate.

In his quest for a Democratic nomination that will require support from a primary electorate that leans progressive, Beto O’Rourke will be running to elude his actual record. If it catches up with him, he’s going to lose.

New Zealand to Immediately Ban Assault Weapons

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand—Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban Thursday on sales of “military-style” semi-automatic and automatic weapons like the ones used in the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch that killed 50 worshippers.

The man charged in the attack had purchased his weapons legally using a standard firearms license and enhanced their capacity by using 30-round magazines “done easily through a simple online purchase,” she said.

“Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned,” she said.

Ardern’s announcement comes less than a week after the killings, as all 50 bodies were formally identified and families were burying their loved ones. At least six funerals took place Thursday, including for a teenager, a youth soccer coach and a Muslim convert who loved connecting with other women at the mosque.

One of New Zealand’s largest gun retailers, Hunting & Fishing New Zealand, said it supports “any government measure to permanently ban such weapons.”

“While we have sold them in the past to a small number of customers, last week’s events have forced a reconsideration that has led us to believe such weapons of war have no place in our business — or our country,” CEO Darren Jacobs said in a statement.

Regardless of the ban, the company would no longer stock any assault-style firearms of any category and would also stop selling firearms online, he said.

Polly Collins, 64, of Christchurch, was thrilled to hear of Ardern’s announcement as she visited a flower memorial for the victims.

“The prime minister is amazing,” she said. “It’s not like in America, where they have all these things and then they go ‘Oh yeah, we’ll deal with the gun laws,’ and nothing’s done.”

At the cemetery, solemn farewells continued for Cashmere High School student Sayyad Ahmad Milne, 14, who was known as an outgoing boy and the school’s futsal goalkeeper. Tariq Rashid Omar, 24, graduated from the same school, played soccer in the summer and was a beloved coach of several youth teams and was also buried Thursday.

In a post on Facebook, Christchurch United Football Club Academy Director Colin Williamson described Omar as “a beautiful human being with a tremendous heart and love for coaching.”

Linda Armstrong, 64, a third-generation New Zealander who converted to Islam in her 50s, was also buried, as were Hussein Mohamed Khalil Moustafa, 70, Matiullah Safi, 55, and Haji Mohammed Daoud Nabi.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush said all 50 victims had been identified as of Thursday and their families were being notified. Investigators also were trying to conclude their work at the two mosques. “We are working to restore them in a way that is absolutely respectful,” he said.

An Australian white supremacist, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, was arrested by police who ran him off the road while he was believed to be on his way to a third target. He had livestreamed the attack on Facebook and said in his manifesto he planned to attack three mosques.

Tarrant, 28, is next scheduled to appear in court on April 5, and Bush said investigations into him were continuing. Police have said they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but are still investigating whether he had support.

Meanwhile, preparations were underway for a massive Friday prayer service to be led by the imam of one of the two New Zealand mosques where worshippers were killed.

Imam Gamal Fouda said he is expecting 3,000 to 4,000 people at Friday’s prayer service, including many who have come from abroad. He expects it will take place in Hagley Park, a city landmark across from Al Noor mosque with members of the Linwood mosque also attending.

Al Noor workers have been trying feverishly to repair the destruction at the mosque, Fouda said.

“They will bury the carpet,” he said. “Because it is full of blood, and it’s contaminated.”

Fouda said that he expects the mosque to be ready to open again by next week and that some skilled workers had offered their services for free.

“The support we have been getting from New Zealand and the community has been amazing,” he said.

As the investigation continues into the attack, Ardern has also said an inquiry would look into intelligence and security services’ failures to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans.

Ardern said Thursday the government is working on a large-scale buy-back plan to encourage owners of now-banned weapons to surrender them. She did not say what would happen to those who violate the law.

She also said she and the Cabinet would work through legal exemptions to the ban, such as for farmers needing to cull their herds but said any exemptions would be “tightly regulated.”

“For other dealers, sales should essentially now cease. My expectation is that these weapons will now be returned to your suppliers and never enter into the New Zealand market again,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Kristen Gelineau also contributed to this report.