Chris Hedges's Blog, page 424

Broken Machines to Violent Threats Among Voting Problems

Voting machine glitches, long lines and misinformation were among the problems that voters faced at the polls on Tuesday.

The cause of the problems ran the gamut from human error to threatened violence to technological errors to Mother Nature as storms pummeled several states in the South.

The issues added more chaos to a bitterly fought election that will decide who controls the Senate, House and hundreds of down-ticket races.

Here’s what you should know about Election Day voting issues:

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LONG LINES, 911 CALL

Long lines and malfunctioning machines marred voting in some precincts across the U.S. Some voters reported waiting up to three hours to vote, with some of the biggest problems in Georgia and New York.

In South Carolina, a woman said she called 911 after waiting outside her polling place for 45 minutes to get help because she’s disabled.

Not even Georgia’s state election boss was immune from voting problems.

Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the state’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, had an issue with his voter card when he went to cast his ballot, but it was fixed quickly. He walked by reporters and said: “Take 2.”

Maricopa County’s top election official says Election Day turnout in metro Phoenix is almost on par with a presidential election. Adrian Fontes says more than 86,000 ballots were cast at polling places after just a few hours Tuesday morning. (Nov 6)

In South Carolina, Sandy Hanebrink told the Anderson Independent-Mail she couldn’t make it inside her polling place because she can’t walk on the gravel or grass where vehicles have to park. Hanebrink said she tried to flag down poll workers and call Anderson County’s election hotline before dialing 911. Poll workers went out after she made her call.

In Florida and California, some voters assigned to polling stations inside gated communities complained that it took them up to an hour to get their cars past security gates.

Elections clerk Rosemarie Reed told WTVJ-TV she was furious to see the long lines in Deerfield Beach, California, and called voting inside a gated community voter suppression. However, Deerfield Beach Commissioner Bernie Parness, who lives inside the gated community, said it was a needed safety measure and minor inconvenience.

Ruth Houston waited about half an hour to get to her polling place at Point Dume Club, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from her home in Malibu, California.

“Voters had to stop at a security gate to be allowed into the gated neighborhood where our polling place was located,” she said in an email to The Associated Press. “A poll worker told neighborhood managers they needed to open the gate so voters could drive in without talking to security, but management refused claiming opening the gate would be against their policy.”

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RACISM AND UNREST

Voting was mostly peaceful across the country on Tuesday, but there were a few reported problems, including heated confrontations between poll workers and voters.

In Texas, a white poll worker was accused of bumping a black voter during an argument at a polling site and suggesting that the voter could better understand her if she’d worn “my blackface makeup.”

The Houston Chronicle reported the dispute began over a discrepancy with the voter’s address. The confrontation escalated, and witnesses confirmed to the newspaper that the worker said, “Maybe if I’d worn my blackface makeup today you could comprehend what I’m saying to you.”

The election judge at the site separated the two. The poll worker was cited for misdemeanor assault.

In Pennsylvania, a man was accused of threatening to shoot poll workers who told him he wasn’t registered to vote.

Melanie Ostrander, Washington County assistant elections director, said 48-year-old Christopher Thomas Queen, of Claysville, went to a polling place in South Franklin Township on Tuesday morning and became irate when he was told he wasn’t registered.

Ostrander said the man “told the poll workers he was going to go get a gun and come back and shoot them.” He was charged with terroristic threats and disorderly conduct. Court documents don’t list an attorney for him.

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WEATHER WOES

Severe weather and humidity were to blame for voting issues in a handful of states.

In North Carolina, officials said high humidity prevented ballots in some precincts from being able to be fed through tabulators in some precincts in Wake and Forsyth counties. Officials said such ballots are stored securely in emergency bins and would be tabulated as soon as possible.

In New York City, a co-chairman of the state election board, Douglas Kellner, said scanners were breaking down at a higher-than-usual rate because it was using a two-page ballot and the weather was damp.

In Tennessee, severe storms that knocked down trees and power lines forced voters in some places to use paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines. Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins said the polling places that had electricity knocked out were operating on generators and had emergency ballots ready. He said the paper ballots would be counted Tuesday.

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VOTERS MISDIRECTED

Election watchers say some voters are reporting being directed to wrong polling places by third-party election help websites such as TurboVote.

Sophia Hall, an attorney who was working at an election protection command center in Boston on Tuesday, says they received several such reports in Massachusetts and are aware of reports in other states.

Hall says they’ve also received reports of people being told they aren’t registered when they arrive at the polls even though they thought their registration had been confirmed by a third-party site.

TurboVote is a tool created by Democracy Works that helps people register and sends voters email and text reminders about registration deadlines, upcoming elections and where to vote. TurboVote doesn’t actually register voters but facilitates registration with state election offices.

Brandon Naylor, a spokesman for Democracy Works, says TurboVote gets its polling location information directly from the states, but sometimes the locations change at the last minute. He also says people sometimes mistakenly believe they are registered but didn’t complete all the steps to complete their registration with the state.

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FORECLOSURE ON POLLING PLACE

A polling station in Arizona failed to open on Tuesday for an unusual reason: The building it was in was foreclosed on overnight.

County Recorder Adrian Fontes said poll workers were trying to set up in the parking lot of the Golf Academy of America, which had been foreclosed on overnight Tuesday.

The owners of the Chandler property locked the doors, taking election officials by surprise. Fontes had said reopening the site would have required a court order.

The polling station was relocated and reopened four hours late.

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MACHINES MALFUNCTIONING

Forty-one states were using computerized voting machines that are more than a decade old. Forty-three states were using machines that are no longer manufactured, making them more difficult to service when they break down, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. Yet Congress has repeatedly balked at appropriating the more than $1 billion needed to upgrade to more reliable systems.

By Tuesday afternoon, the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline had received about 17,500 calls from voters experiencing problems at their polling places. Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which helps run the hotline, said that was on par with the number of calls received during a presidential election and noted the hotline had received about 10,400 calls by the same time in 2014.

Clarke ran through a list of voting problems, which largely were connected to malfunctioning voting machines reported in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia.

“Unfortunately, in this cycle we have seen sign evidence that we have important work to do to ensure that jurisdictions across the country are using the best voting equipment that is available and machines that don’t malfunction,” Clarke said. “We should not tolerate this kind of outcome in 2018.”

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MEDIA KEPT AWAY

Media outlets were barred from taking photos or video Tuesday at a polling place in Kansas that has been at the center of controversy for weeks, and an embattled Republican congressman banned Iowa’s largest newspaper from covering his election night events.

In the only polling place in Dodge City, Kansas, which is outside city limits and more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the nearest bus stop, reporters were allowed into the Expo Center polling place with notebooks only, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Ford County Clerk Debbie Cox said letting the media take pictures and video would be too disruptive.

Attorney Bradley Schlozman, representing Cox, said Kansas law allows the election board to control procedures at polling sites.

Max Kautsch, an attorney for the Capital-Journal and the Kansas Press Association, said that law needs to be balanced with rights under the First Amendment. He noted Ford County has allowed photographs in previous elections.

In Iowa, Republican Rep. Steve King decided to ban the Des Moines Register from his election night events in Sioux City.

The Register reported it requested credentials to cover the event but King’s son, Jeff King, responded Tuesday with an email saying, “We are not granting credentials to the Des Moines Register or any other leftist propaganda media outlet with no concern for reporting the truth.”

King has faced criticism from Republican officials and lost funding from business groups after he tweeted support for a white nationalist candidate in Toronto and praised a nationalist party in Austria with Nazi ties. King said media reports have been inaccurate and unfair.

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MISINFORMATION

A sign discouraging college students from voting was spotted at polling place in Rexburg, Idaho, on Tuesday morning.

Kristine Anderson, of Rexburg, spotted the sign, which told students they “should not be registering and voting in your college locale simply because you failed to register and vote at your true domicile.”

Anderson reported the sign to American Civil Liberties Union-Idaho, which tweeted: “We’ve spoken with the Madison County Clerk and they’re headed to the precinct to investigate these signs.” Anderson said the area is home to a large contingent of college students at Brigham Young University-Idaho.

College students have dual residency and a choice of where they want to vote. They can register back at home or on campus but not in both places.

Senate Update: Republicans Remain in Control

Editor’s note: Below is a selection of the Associated Press’ updates about contests around the country for U.S. Senate seats. More news and commentary about midterm election results will be posted soon on Truthdig.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on U.S. Senate elections (all times local):

11:55 p.m.

Republican Josh Hawley has unseated Missouri’s Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in a national victory for the GOP.

Republicans have long hoped to flip McCaskill’s seat in the increasingly Republican state. Missouri was once considered a bellwether known for picking the successful presidential candidate, but it’s since lost that status and trended right.

President Donald Trump won the state by nearly 19 percentage points. Missouri’s attorney general pinned his campaign to his support for the president.

McCaskill was one of 10 Democratic Senate incumbents up for re-election in states Trump won.

Voters first elected McCaskill to the Senate in 2006. She won re-election in 2012 after Republican candidate Todd Akin said women’s bodies can prevent pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.”

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11:40 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell has won re-election in Washington, beating Republican challenger Susan Hutchison.

Cantwell easily outdistanced Hutchison, a former Seattle TV anchor and state GOP chairwoman.

Cantwell is a former tech executive who previously served one term in the U.S. House and six years as a state representative in the state Legislature. She will be serving her fourth term.

It’s been nearly a quarter century since the GOP has captured a major statewide race in Washington.

The last time voters sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate was 1994, when Sen. Slade Gorton was re-elected to his final term before being ousted by Cantwell in 2000.

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11:25 p.m.

Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan has won a fourth term in the Senate, defeating Republican challenger John James.

Stabenow campaigned as a pragmatic lawmaker who forges bipartisan agreement despite the partisan rancor in Washington. She cited her work shaping farm legislation and pushing a new law that allows pharmacists to tell consumers when they can save on prescriptions by paying cash instead of using insurance.

The 68-year-old Stabenow criticized President Trump’s attempt to slash federal funding for the Great Lakes. She said James would have been an unabashed enthusiast of Trump with no governing experience.

James is a black combat veteran and business executive. Trump won Michigan in 2016. He called James “a star” candidate.

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11:15 p.m.

Mississippi’s U.S. Senate special election is headed to a runoff, and the state’s voters will either elect a woman to the office for the first time ever or a black man for the first time since Reconstruction.

Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy advanced Tuesday from a field of four. They compete in a Nov. 27 runoff, and the winner will serve the final two years of a term started by Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, who retired in April.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Hyde-Smith, who was state agriculture commissioner, to temporarily succeed Cochran until the special election is decided. She is the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress, but no woman has been elected to the job from the state. She is endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Espy is a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary.

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11:10 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii has defeated Republican Ron Curtis to win a second term.

Hirono had an advantage going into Tuesday’s midterm election as an incumbent with broad name recognition. Her challenger is a retired engineer who had never run for public office.

Hirono has served in the legislature, as lieutenant governor and as U.S. representative. The 71-year-old kept a relatively low profile early on in the Senate, but has gained attention for her outspoken opposition to President Donald Trump and his policies.

Hirono urged men to “shut up and step up” when the Senate was considering confirming Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some Hawaii voters cheered the statement, while others accused her of being anti-male.

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11:10 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Tina Smith has won Minnesota’s special election to finish the final two years of former Sen. Al Franken’s term.

Smith defeated Republican state Sen. Karin Housley on Tuesday. The election was a 10-month sprint, triggered in January after Franken resigned amid a growing sexual misconduct scandal.

Smith got a head start in the race when she was appointed to take the seat by Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. Smith was Dayton’s lieutenant governor and former top aide.

Housley tried to brand Smith as a political insider. But national Republican groups largely bypassed Housley’s race, sinking resources instead into more winnable races in states like North Dakota and Indiana.

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11:10 p.m.

Republican Sen. Deb Fischer has cruised to a second term in Nebraska, defeating Lincoln city councilwoman Jane Raybould.

Fischer won Tuesday despite Raybould’s efforts to cast the first-term incumbent as a Washington insider who sided with her party even when it was harmful to the GOP-friendly state. Raybould pitched herself to voters as an outsider who would look for ways to lower health care costs.

Fischer rejected the criticism and noted her work on Senate committees focused on agriculture and the military, both important areas to Nebraska with its farm economy and Offutt Air Force Base.

The candidates differed on their support for new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced sexual assault allegations during his confirmation process. Kavanaugh denied the allegations. Fischer voted to confirm Kavanaugh, while Raybould said the allegations merited further investigation.

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11 p.m.

Republican Marsha Blackburn has won a grueling, expensive contest to become the first female U.S. senator from Tennessee.

The congresswoman defeated Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen on Tuesday by closely aligning her bid with President Donald Trump. The president made three visits to the state for her.

Blackburn has sought to undermine Bredesen’s reputation as an independent thinker by tying him to national Democrats at every turn. Blackburn was first elected to the House in 2002 and has called herself a “hardcore, card-carrying Tennessee conservative.”

Blackburn will replace retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker. She represents a rightward shift from Corker and other more centrist senators that Tennessee has historically elected.

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10:50 p.m.

Republicans have retained Senate control for two more years, shattering Democrats’ dreams of an anti-Trump wave sweeping them into majority.

The result was all but assured when Republican Kevin Cramer ousted North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and when Republican businessman Mike Braun ousted Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz fended off a spirited challenge from Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn triumphed in Tennessee.

The GOP’s gains come even as the results in Nevada and Arizona have yet to be determined.

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10:45 p.m.

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has handily won a U.S. Senate seat in his adopted home state of Utah after a campaign where he backed off his once-fierce criticism of Donald Trump.

Romney clinched the win Tuesday as he defeated Democrat Jenny Wilson, a member of the Salt Lake County council.

Romney was the heavy favorite to win the seat in conservative Utah, where he holds near-celebrity status as the first Mormon presidential nominee from a major party.

He replaces longtime Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who chose not to seek re-election.

Romney denounced Trump as a “fraud” and a “phony” during the 2016 campaign, but has since said he approves of many Trump policies.

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10:40 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich has been re-elected in a three-way race against a Republican political newcomer and a Libertarian former governor.

The engineer and former congressman won a second term, finishing ahead of construction contractor Mick Rich and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

Heinrich cast himself as a vigorous adversary of President Donald Trump’s policies in the Senate. He campaigned on promises to defend federal health care and retirement programs.

Heinrich recently became an advocate for decriminalizing marijuana, co-opting one of Johnson’s signature Libertarian issues against government interference. He derided Johnson’s proposals to slash federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid and the military.

Rich ran on his reputation as a businessman while embracing Trump and voicing anti-abortion sentiments.

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10:30 p.m.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz fended off rising-star Democrat Beto O’Rourke to win re-election in a much-watched Texas race that began as a cakewalk but needed a visit from President Donald Trump to help push the incumbent over the top.

Cruz finished a surprising second in the 2016 Republican presidential primary and began the Senate race as a prohibitive favorite.

But O’Rourke visited fiercely conservative parts of the state that his party had long since given up on, while shattering fundraising records despite shunning donations from outside political groups and pollster advice.

Cruz argued that his opponent’s support for gun control and universal health care were too liberal for Texas.

Trump and Cruz were bitter 2016 rivals, but the president visited Houston late last month to solidify the senator’s win.

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10:15 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has turned back a challenge by Republican Patrick Morrisey to win his second full-term in a state carried by President Donald Trump.

Manchin survived the most difficult re-election campaign of his career against the comparative newcomer Morrisey. Manchin is a former governor who has held elected office in West Virginia for the better part of three decades.

Manchin heavily outspent Morrisey and portrayed himself as loyal to his home state rather than party ideology. Manchin was the only Senate Democrat to vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Manchin was critical of Morrisey’s New Jersey roots and his past lobbying ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Morrisey is a two-term state attorney general and a staunch Trump supporter.

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10 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin has won a second term, fending off a challenge from a Republican who ran as a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump.

Baldwin led Leah Vukmir in fundraising and polls throughout the race.

Baldwin is one of the most liberal members of Congress. The differences between her and Vukmir were stark. They disagreed on almost every issue.

Baldwin made the campaign largely about health care and Vukmir’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Baldwin argued for keeping the law and its guarantee of insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

The race was Wisconsin’s first for Senate where both major party candidates were women.

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9:50 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar has easily won a third term in Minnesota.

Klobuchar defeated Republican state Rep. Jim Newberger on Tuesday. It comes as Klobuchar’s name swirls amid the crop of potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2020.

The race was never close. Newberger is a little-known state lawmaker who struggled to raise money against the popular Klobuchar.

Republicans put far more focus on the state’s other Senate race to complete the last two years of Al Franken’s term. State Sen. Karin Housley is carrying the party’s hopes in that race against Democratic Sen. Tina Smith.

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9:45 p.m.

Republican businessman Mike Braun has ousted Sen. Joe Donnelly Indiana’s lone statewide elected Democrat. Both candidates portrayed themselves as fans of President Donald Trump during the campaign.

The GOP has dreamed of this victory since Donnelly unexpectedly beat Republican nominee Richard Mourdock in 2012, after Mourdock made incendiary comments about abortion and rape.

However, few would have predicted Braun’s win when he entered the race last year. The multimillionaire auto-parts magnate was a little-known state representative when he launched his bid.

But Braun used his own wealth to out-fundraise two better known congressmen during a bitter GOP primary that was fueled on personal attacks.

Indiana has elected conservative Democrats but increasingly trended Republican in recent years.

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9:20 p.m.

Democrat Bob Casey of Pennsylvania has won a third Senate term, beating Republican Rep. Lou Barletta.

Barletta was an early supporter of President Donald Trump, who returned the favor by campaigning for the former Hazleton mayor. The president narrowly won Pennsylvania in 2016, but Casey easily won re-election Tuesday in a state that has now given the son of the late former governor six statewide election victories.

Casey is a staunch critic of Trump’s tax cuts, calling them a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations while middle-class wages stagnate. Casey also voted against Trump’s nominees for Supreme Court.

Barletta is one of Trump’s biggest allies on Capitol Hill. He campaigned on Trump’s record, but he never gained traction and was heavily outspent by Casey.

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9:15 p.m.

Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker has been re-elected in Mississippi and Republican John Barrasso has won a second full term in Wyoming.

Wicker defeated Democratic state Rep. David Baria and two others Tuesday, keeping the seat he has held since 2007.

After Republican Sen. Trent Lott resigned in late 2007, then-Gov. Haley Barbour appointed Wicker to temporarily fill the seat. Wicker won a special election in 2008 to complete Lott’s term, and was re-elected in 2012.

Barrasso defeated Gary Trauner in a race that was a referendum on President Donald Trump in the state. Barrasso argued that less federal regulation and federal income tax cuts enacted under Trump have helped Wyoming’s economy.

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9:05 p.m.

Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has defeated Republican challenger Chele Farley to win re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Gillibrand was heavily favored in Tuesday’s election and has been talked about as a potential presidential candidate in 2020.

At a recent debate, Gillibrand pledged to serve her entire six-year Senate term.

Gillibrand was appointed in 2009 to the Senate seat vacated when Hillary Clinton was nominated as secretary of state.

She rose to prominence in the #MeToo movement last year as the first Democratic senator to call publicly for fellow Democratic Sen. Al Franken to resign amid sexual misconduct allegations.

She has also focused on sexual assault in the military and on college campuses.

Farley works in the financial services industry. She’s never held elected office.

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8:55 p.m.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez has fended off his wealthy Republican challenger to win re-election despite a barrage of ads about corruption charges he beat in court.

Menendez, 64, wins a third term Tuesday after a grueling campaign against Republican Bob Hugin.

Polls showed Hugin, 64, and Menendez much closer than expected in overwhelmingly Democratic New Jersey.

Hugin tapped his deep pockets for at least $27.5 million and spent on TV ads attacking Menendez over the 2017 trial on charges that he helped a friend with Medicare billing in exchange for lavish gifts.

Prosecutors decided not to retry the case after a mistrial.

The race was particularly significant because Democrats are defending 26 seats, including 10 incumbents running in states that President Donald Trump won in 2016.

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8:15 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown has been elected to a third term.

Brown handily defeated fourth-term Rep. Jim Renacci (ruh-NAY’-see), who dropped a governor’s bid to run for Senate at Trump’s urging.

Brown is in his fifth decade of Ohio politics. He won his first election to the state’s House in 1974 and unseated Republican Sen. Mike DeWine in 2006. With a history of blue-collar appeal and union support, Brown has backed Trump moves on steel tariffs and renegotiating trade agreements.

Renacci is a businessman who called Brown a liberal out of touch with Ohio values.

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8 p.m.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a potential 2020 White House contender, is among a group of five Democratic lawmakers who have easily won re-election to the Senate.

Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Tom Carper of Delaware and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island also won. They were heavy favorites in their races.

Warren has generated considerable speculation about a possible run for the White House in 2020, recently saying she’d take a “hard look” at a presidential bid after the Senate race was over.

Murphy won a second term after amassing a fundraising war chest that was 100 times larger than his opponent’s.

Meanwhile, Carper won his fourth term. He has never lost an election during four decades in politics.

Cardin and Whitehouse both won third terms.

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7:55 p.m.

Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine has dispatched a die-hard supporter of President Donald Trump to win re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Kaine defeated Republican Corey Stewart on Tuesday.

The victory was widely expected as Kaine enjoyed large leads in most public polls and had a huge cash advantage.

Kaine is a former governor who was first elected to the Senate in 2012. He was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016.

Stewart is a conservative provocateur best known for his outspoken support of Confederate imagery and hard-line views on immigration. He struggled to raise money and was ignored by national GOP groups.

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7:00 p.m.

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders has cruised to re-election for his third term in the Senate, easily outpacing eight candidates.

Sanders, the independent who has long been one of the state’s most popular politicians, spent little time campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Sanders has faced few serious opponents since he was first elected to the state’s lone seat in the House in 1990. He moved up to the Senate in 2006.

The Republican candidate, Lawrence Zupan, a Manchester real estate broker with experience in international trade, campaigned against what he felt was big government and social welfare programs. But his candidacy never gained traction and his campaign drew little attention.

Rather than focusing on his re-election, Sanders traveled the country to support Democratic candidates and an array of policy issues.

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6:30 p.m.

Beyonce has endorsed Texas Democratic Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke over Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in the final hours before her home state’s polls close.

The native Houstonian released a series of Instagram posts with a black and white “Beto” cap partially covering her face on Tuesday afternoon.

O’Rourke himself then retweeted one of the pictures under the caption “Thank you, Beyonce.”

An El Paso congressman, O’Rourke is trying to become the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas since 1994. He’s drawn the admiration of many celebrities, including Texas country music icon Willie Nelson.

Cruz dismisses his opponent’s upset-minded campaign as too liberal for Texas since O’Rourke supports universal health care and impeaching President Donald Trump.

___

2 p.m.

Republicans are aiming to retain Senate control in Tuesday’s voting.

Democrats’ longshot prospects for capturing a Senate majority are pinned on hopes of their supporters surging to the polls. Democrats and some independents have been motivated by Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies and his efforts to dismantle health care protections enacted under President Barack Obama.

The Democrats have history on their side: 2002 was the only midterm election in the past three decades when the party holding the White House gained Senate seats.

Republicans have a narrow 51-49 majority. Democrats need to gain two Senate seats to win a majority. But they and their two independent allies are defending 26 of the 35 seats in play. Those 26 seats include 10 in states that Trump won in 2016.

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House Update: Trump Calls to Congratulate Pelosi

Editor’s note: Below is a selection of the Associated Press’ updates about contests around the country for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. More news and commentary about midterm election results will be posted soon on Truthdig.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on elections to the U.S. House of Representatives (all times local):

12:50 a.m.President Donald Trump has called to congratulate Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi as her party stood on the brink of recapturing the House of Representatives.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president made a series of calls while watching the election results late Tuesday.

Pelosi’s spokesman Drew Hammill said Trump called Pelosi to congratulate her and to note her tone of bipartisanship.

Sanders says Trump also called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “to congratulate him on historic Senate gains.”

Trump also called outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

And he called several Republican winners for whom he campaigned in recent weeks, including incoming Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, incoming Ohio governor Mike DeWine and incoming Florida Sen. Rick Scott.

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12:40 a.m.
Republican Steve King has won a ninth term representing northwest Iowa’s 4th Congressional District.Voters re-elected King despite a string of controversies about comments and meetings he has held involving other candidates and groups characterized as white nationalists. King has argued that all those he met or made comments about were simply conservatives.King defeated Democrat J.D. Scholten, a former minor league baseball player who raised more money than King and spent months crisscrossing the 39-county district.

King did little campaigning but maintained his hardline views on immigration and support of gun rights were in step with the conservative district.

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12:20 a.m.

Women will break the current record of 84 serving at once in the U.S. House.

With ballots still being counted across the country, women have won 75 seats and are assured of victory in nine districts where women are the only major-party candidates.

Outrage and organizing by women have defined Democratic Party politics this election cycle — from the Women’s March opposing President Donald Trump the day after he was inaugurated in January 2017 through a stream of sexual assault accusations later that year that sparked the #MeToo movement.

More than 230 women, many of them first-time candidates, were on the general-election ballots in House races.

Despite the gains, men will continue to hold the vast majority of House seats.

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12:15 a.m.

Democrats have picked up at least 23 House seats, putting them on track to reach the 218 needed to seize control from Republicans after eight years.

Democrats knocked off at least 17 GOP incumbents, picking up moderate, suburban districts across the county. Democrats won seats stretching from suburban Washington, New York and Philadelphia to outside Miami, Chicago and Denver. West Coast results were still coming in.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger of Virginia defeated Republican incumbent Dave Brat in suburban Richmond to give Democrats the 23rd pickup.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is hailing “‘a new day in America.”

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11:55 p.m.
Nancy Pelosi is telling Democratic lawmakers and supporters that elections are about the future and “thank you all for making the future better for all of America’s children.”Pelosi spoke as Democrats closed in on control of the House.Pelosi said the election Tuesday was about more than Republicans and Democrats. It was about restoring the Constitution and providing a balance to the Trump administration.She says the election is also about stopping what she described as the GOP’s attacks on entitlement programs and the Affordable Care Act. She says Democrats will find common ground when they can and stand their ground when necessary.

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11:50 p.m.

Democrats are moving toward control of the House. They’ve picked up moderate, suburban districts across the Northeast and Midwest as they get closer to the 23 seats they need to wrest control from Republicans.

Republican incumbent Reps. Rod Blum and David Young of Iowa, Randy Hultgren of Illinois, Leonard Lance of New Jersey and Pete Sessions of Texas all lost contested races.

Democrat Abby Finkenauer beat Blum and will be among the youngest women ever elected to the House. Democrat Cindy Axne beat Young, and Lauren Underwood, a 32-year-old African-American nurse, topped Hultgren.

Democrat Tom Malinowski, a former State Department official under President Barack Obama, defeated Lance, a five-term incumbent. Former NFL linebacker and civil rights attorney Colin Allred defeated Sessions, flipping a reliably conservative Dallas enclave.

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11 p.m.

Democrat Sean Casten has defeated six-term Republican Rep. Peter Roskam to flip a suburban Chicago district the GOP has held for more than four decades.

Casten, a scientist and businessman, argued that Roskam was too conservative for a district that supported Hillary Clinton over President Donald Trump in 2016. Casten pointed to Roskam’s record of opposing abortion and his record of voting along with Trump.

Casten focused his campaign on health care and has called for stricter gun control laws.

Roskam insisted he’s a moderate who opposed Trump when necessary. He criticized Casten as wanting to raise taxes and for name-calling and “embracing the politics of ridicule.”

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10:35 p.m.
First-time Democratic candidate Jason Crow has defeated five-term Republican Rep. Mike Coffman in suburban Denver.Crow, 39, is a former Army Ranger and captain who fought in Iraq. He then went to work at a politically-connected Denver law firm before taking on Coffman, who has survived repeated strong Democratic challenges in the diverse district.Hillary Clinton won the district by nine points in 2016 while Coffman won it by eight.Coffman is an Army and Marine veteran and is active on veterans’ issues. But Crow used his own military service to neutralize Coffman’s advantage. Crow also embraced the cause of gun control in a district that was home to the 2012 Aurora theater shooting that killed 12 and abuts Columbine High School, where two teen-aged gunmen killed 13 in 1999.___

10:20 p.m.

Democratic newcomer Sharice Davids has defeated incumbent Rep. Kevin Yoder in Kansas to become the nation’s first LGBT Native American in Congress.

The 38-year-old activist, lawyer and political newcomer already garnered national attention as part of a crop of diverse Democratic candidates.

Yoder was endorsed by President Donald Trump, but the suburban Kansas City district voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. The district is a mix of fast-growing bedroom communities, established suburbs and poorer city neighborhoods.

Davids emerged from a six-person Democratic primary and energized voters and Democratic donors by emphasizing her biography. Her history includes mixed martial arts fights.

She’s a member of the Wisconsin-based Ho-Chunk Nation and was raised by a single mother who served in the Army and worked for the U.S. Postal Service.

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10:10 p.m.

Democratic businessman Dean Phillips has defeated Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen in a suburban Minnesota district that figures heavily into Democrats’ hopes for a House takeover.

Paulsen had easily won elections throughout his five terms in office even as the Minneapolis-area district trended toward Democrats.

But the district favored Hillary Clinton by nearly 10 points two years ago, and a statewide poll late in the race showed Phillips with a comfortable lead. Outside groups poured more than $10 million into the battleground race.

Phillips ran his family’s liquor company and started a chain of local coffee shops. He painted Paulsen as too in-step with President Donald Trump, though Paulsen tried to distance himself from the president.

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10:05 p.m.

Newly minted Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania has defeated three-term Republican Rep. Keith Rothfus in the nation’s only House race pitting two incumbents against each other.

Democrats enjoy a 71,000-voter registration edge in the suburban Pittsburgh district, and Lamb comfortably led polls over Rothfus, who has one of Pennsylvania’s most conservative voting records in Congress.

Lamb won a special election in March to succeed Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned, in a district that Trump won by about 20 points.

Both men live in the new 17th District, despite living in different districts that they currently represent.

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10 p.m.Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has defeated Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo in Florida, the second GOP incumbent House member to fall. Curbelo, a moderate and critic of President Donald Trump, was trying to defy the political winds against Trump in the South Florida district.Mucarsel-Powell is an immigrant from Ecuador who has worked for several nonprofit organizations in Miami-Dade County. She ran on preventing gun violence and protecting the environment, but her main focus was on health care and the Affordable Care Act, which Curbelo voted to repeal.Mucarsel-Powell painted Curbelo as a politician who talks like a moderate but tends to vote with conservatives.Curbelo is a leader of the bipartisan Climate Caucus and bucked GOP leadership this summer by supporting a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide, a contributor to global warming.___



9:20 p.m.

Democrat Ayanna Pressley has completed her quest to become Massachusetts’ first black woman elected to Congress.

Pressley is also the first African-American to serve on the Boston City Council. She sailed through Tuesday’s general election to Congress unopposed, two months after unseating 10-term Rep. Michael Capuano in a primary that was a national political stunner.

With no Republican in the race in the heavily Democratic district, her upset victory in the primary had all but assured Pressley the House seat, with only the remote possibility of a write-in campaign to potentially stop her.

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9:00 p.m.

Republican Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky won a close-fought race that Democrats had targeted in a bid to shift the House to Democratic control.

Barr turned back a strong challenge from Democrat Amy McGrath in a district that supported President Donald Trump two years ago.

McGrath, a retired fighter pilot, gave Barr his toughest test yet as he sought a fourth term. Barr urged voters to re-elect him for his “access and influence with this administration,” while McGrath countered with a message of “country over party.”

Barr won by 22 points in 2016, but McGrath waged an aggressive challenge, including TV ads showing her in front of fighter jets and with her young children.

The district includes Lexington and capital Frankfort. The seat has switched parties five times since 1978.

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8:50 p.m.

In Indiana, Greg Pence, an older brother of Vice President Mike Pence, has won a heavily Republican House seat that his famous sibling once held.

The 61-year-old Pence, an owner of two antique malls, defeated Democrat Jeannine Lee Lake, who publishes a bi-monthly Muncie newspaper.

The eastern Indiana seat is open because Republican Rep. Luke Messer ran in the GOP primary for the Senate. Greg Pence is one of Mike Pence’s three brothers.

Greg Pence is a Marine veteran and once ran a now-bankrupt chain of convenience stores.

___

8:30 p.m.

Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia was the first congressional incumbent to lose as voters in her Northern Virginia district expressed their continued dislike of President Donald Trump.

Democratic state Sen. Jennifer Wexton won an easy victory in the wealthy suburban district outside Washington, which Hillary Clinton won by 10 percentage points.

Comstock tried hard to emphasize her independence from Trump, but Wexton, a former prosecutor, portrayed the two-term incumbent as a Trump ally out of touch with the diverse, well-educated district.

Comstock easily beat a Democrat in 2016 when her district went for Clinton.

The national focus on the race helped Comstock and Wexton raise more than $5 million in all, while outside groups spent more than $10 million.

___

8:25 p.m.

Donna Shalala has won a U.S. House seat in Florida, making her the first Democrat to flip a GOP seat on Tuesday night.

After serving in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet and running major universities, Shalala is starting a third career with her election to the House.

The 77-year-old Democrat won Tuesday in a Miami district that had long been in Republican hands. Shalala has sought to turn her age into a positive by stressing her experience with this slogan: “Ready on Day One.”

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7:30 p.m.

Polls have closed in several East Coast states as voters decide control of Congress and statehouses across the nation.

A tight Kentucky congressional race in a district President Donald Trump won by double digits could be an early indicator whether the House will shift to Democratic control.

Retired fighter pilot Amy McGrath has given Republican incumbent Andy Barr his toughest test yet as he seeks a fourth term outside Lexington.

In suburban Atlanta, Republican Rep. Karen Handel faced a strong challenge from Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed at a gas station.

In Virginia, GOP. Rep. Barbara Comstock was trying to fend off political newcomer Jennifer Wexton, while one-time tea party favorite Rep. Dave Brat faced off against Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA operative.

___

2 p.m.

In the battle for control of the House, Democrats are increasingly confident they’ll pick up the 23 seats needed to seize control and flip the majority.

They are counting on voter enthusiasm and the strength of their candidates to carry them to victory. More women than ever are running, along with military veterans and minorities, in districts across the country.

Republicans predict they’ll lose seats but hold a slim majority based on what they say is a healthy economy.

The midterm elections are typically difficult for the party in power. This year it’s become a referendum on President Donald Trump and GOP control of Congress.

House Republicans took control in 2010 during then-President Barack Obama’s first term.

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Dems Flip 2 GOP seats in Early Returns for House Battle

WASHINGTON — The Democrats flipped their first two Republican-held House seats Tuesday in Florida and Virginia but fell short in a closely watched race in Kentucky as they worked to wrest control of the chamber from the GOP and confront President Donald Trump.

With polls closing across the East, one of the top Democratic recruits, retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, lost her bid to oust to three-term Rep. Andy Barr in the Lexington-area district.In the Miami area, former Clinton administration Cabinet member Donna Shalala defeated television journalist Maria Elvira Salazar in a costly, roller-coaster contest. Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock — among the most endangered GOP incumbents, branded Barbara “Trumpstock” by Democrats — lost to Jennifer Wexton, a prosecutor and state legislator. She was among the record number of women running this year.

As Election Day unfolded, Democrats were increasingly confident, predicting they would pick up at least the 23 seats needed for a House majority on the strength of voter enthusiasm, robust fundraising and unusually fresh candidates.

A Democratic majority in the House would break the GOP’s monopoly on power in Washington and give the party a check on Trump’s agenda. It would also almost certainly bring an onslaught of investigations of his businesses and his administration.

“The drumbeat you hear across America is people voting,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said as polls opened. Individual races “will be close,” she said, but because of the “quality of our candidates” and emphasis on preserving health care, “I feel confident we will win.”

Midterm elections are typically difficult for the party in power, and GOP incumbents were on defense in races across the country. More women than ever were running, along with military veterans and minorities, many of them motivated by Trump’s rise.

Campaigns unfolded against a backdrop of jarring political imagery, heated rhetoric and angry debates on immigration, health care and the role of Congress in overseeing the president.

To stem Republican losses, Trump sprinted through mostly white regions of the country, interjecting dark and foreboding warnings about what Democratic power would mean for the nation.

The debate was dominated not by the GOP’s $1.5 trillion tax cuts but by Trump’s dire prediction of “invasion” from the migrant caravan and what he called the “radical” agenda of speaker-in-waiting Pelosi.

GOP Whip Steve Scalise said the president’s rallies were building momentum, and with the economy a selling point, he predicted his party would retain a slim majority.

“In the end, we hold the House because of the strong economy,” the Louisiana Republican told The Associated Press on the eve of Election Day.

Health care and immigration were high on voters’ minds as they cast ballots, according to a wide-ranging survey of the American electorate conducted by AP.

AP VoteCast also showed a majority of voters considered Trump a factor in their votes. VoteCast debuted Tuesday and is a survey of more than 120,000 voters and nonvoters conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.

For Democrats, the road to the 218-seat majority ran through two dozen suburban districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016 and through swaths of Trump country in the Rust Belt and heartland where voters backed the president. It was a deliberate strategy to expand the playing field to about 80 districts, stretching beyond college-educated voters in the suburbs into regions where the party has seen its fortunes fade.

How women and independent voters cast their ballots was likely to determine the outcome. Hundreds of millions were spent by the parties, supplemented by more money from outside groups, to frame the debate. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who advocates gun control, poured millions into House races for Democrats, offsetting the big-dollar spending to save Republicans by the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Republicans still had advantages in some areas, giving them hope of retaining a slim majority. Trump had been tweeting support for specific GOP candidates, even as he acknowledged potential losses by emphasizing that his focus was on the Senate.

Ballot counting could drag in tight races, leaving some races undecided long after Election Day.

Several districts on the East Coast with early poll closing times were among those watched Tuesday for signs of the electorate’s mood.

Outside Richmond, one-time tea party favorite Rep. Dave Brat faced an unusually strong challenge from Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA operative motivated to run for office after the GOP vote to gut the Affordable Care Act. Like other Democrats across the country, Spanberger emphasized protecting people with pre-existing conditions from being denied coverage or charged more by insurers.

In a suburban battleground in Atlanta, Republican Rep. Karen Handel won a costly special election earlier this cycle but faced an upstart challenge from Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed at a gas station.

The GOP’s hold on the majority was complicated by an unusually large number of retirements as well as persistent infighting between conservatives and centrists, with much of the conflict centered on the question of allegiance to Trump.

Pennsylvania looked particularly daunting for Republicans after redistricting and a rash of retirements put several seats in play. Democratic favorite Conor Lamb stunned Washington by winning a special election in the state and faced Republican Rep. Keith Rothfus in a new district that was among four that could flip from red to blue. Other seats in the state were also considered in play.

In North Carolina, Republicans were struggling to hold onto a seat where Baptist minister Mark Harris ousted a GOP incumbent in the primary. Harris was facing a stiff challenge from Marine veteran and small-businessman Dan McCready.

Republicans had expected the GOP tax plan would be the cornerstone of their election agenda this year, but it became a potential liability in key states along the East and West coasts where residents could face higher tax bills because of limits on property and sales tax deductions.

The tax law has been particularly problematic for Republicans in New Jersey, where four of five GOP-held seats were being seriously contested. Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, was favored for a suburban Newark seat that became open after the sudden retirement of the powerful chairman of the Appropriations Committee. An open seat that included Atlantic City was also ripe for Democratic pickup by state lawmaker Jeff Van Drew after the GOP campaign committee abandoned Republican Seth Grossman over racially charged comments.

The committee also distanced itself from eight-term Rep. Steve King of Iowa after racial remarks, and his seat was unexpectedly contested in the final week of the campaign.

The fight for control of the House could come down to a handful of seats out West, particularly in California, where the GOP’s one-time stronghold of Orange County voted for Clinton in 2016.

Four GOP seats in Orange County, including two where the incumbent Republicans retired, were in play, along with three other seats to the north beyond Los Angeles and into the Central Valley.

“We always knew these races are going to be close,” said Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, co-chair of House Democrats’ recruitment efforts. “It’s just a very robust class of candidates that really reflects who we are as a country.”

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Long Lines, Machine Breakdowns Mar Vote on Election Day

ATLANTA — Problem signs that arose during weeks of early voting carried into Election Day as some voters across the country faced hours-long lines, malfunctioning voting equipment and unexpectedly closed polling places.

Some of the biggest backups were in Georgia, where the governor’s race was among the nation’s most-watched midterm contests and was generating heavy turnout.

One voter in Gwinnett County, Ontaria Woods, waited more than three hours and said she saw about two dozen people who had come to vote leave because of the lines.

“We’ve been trying to tell them to wait, but people have children,” Woods said. “People are getting hungry. People are tired.”

The good-government group Common Cause blamed high turnout combined with too few voting machines, ballots and workers.

Fulton County elections director Richard Barron acknowledged that some precincts did have lines of voters but said that was due to the length of the ballots and voting machines taken from use because of an ongoing lawsuit.

While voting went on without a hitch in many communities, voters from New York to Arizona faced long lines and malfunctioning equipment.

By Tuesday afternoon, the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline had received about 17,500 calls from voters reporting problems at their polling places. Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which helps run the hotline, said that number was well ahead of the last midterm election in 2014, when it had received about 10,400 calls by the same time.

Tuesday’s election marked the first nationwide voting since Russia targeted state election systems in the 2016 presidential race. Federal, state and local officials have been working to make the nation’s myriad election systems more secure, and those efforts appeared to pay off.

There were no signs throughout the day that Russia or any other foreign actor had tried to launch cyberattacks against voting systems in any state, federal authorities said. There was also no indication that any systems have been compromised that would prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt the ability to tally votes, U.S. officials said.

That was little comfort to voters who found themselves waiting in long lines or dealing with malfunctioning voting equipment.

Across New York City, reports of broken ballot scanners surfaced at several polling places. Turnout was so heavy at one packed precinct on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that the line to scan ballots stretched around a junior high school gym. Poll workers there told voters that two of the roughly half-dozen scanners were malfunctioning and repairs were underway.

Voters arriving at two polling stations discovered that most scanners had broken down, forcing some people to drop their ballots in emergency ballot boxes or vote using affidavit ballots.

“There are broken scanners everywhere in Brooklyn,” said Stefan Ringel, spokesman for Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

Ringel said Adams and his staff were being flooded with phone calls, emails and text messages reporting breakdowns in more than a dozen neighborhoods.

Compared with the 2016 elections, he said, “anecdotally, it seems worse, and there’s confusion among poll workers about what to do.”

Many voters nevertheless stuck it out, determined to cast their ballots.

“People are grumpy and frustrated but positive in a weird way, making jokes and talking to one another. I think it’s because we all are in the ‘no one will stop our vote today’ mood,” said Nikki Euell, an advertising producer who waited more than two hours to vote in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood.

The local breakdowns are a symptom of a larger problem with the nation’s voting infrastructure, said Lawrence Norden, a voting technology expert with the Brennan Center.

More than 40 states use computerized voting machines that are more than a decade old or are no longer manufactured.

“It’s further evidence, if any was needed, that it’s long past time to modernize our voting infrastructure,” Norden said. “Voters have a right to be frustrated by long lines. And they have a right to expect voting machines that work and have a paper backup.”

Elsewhere, polling place confusion caused problems for voters and poll workers.

In Phoenix, a polling site was foreclosed on overnight, forcing poll workers to move it just in time for polls to open.

For about an hour after polls opened, a Sarasota County, Florida, precinct had to tell voters to come back later because their ballots were unavailable.

In one Indiana county, voting was snarled for hours because of what election officials said were computer problems checking in voters, while in another part of the state a judge ordered 12 polling places to stay open late after voting didn’t start as scheduled.

In Texas, home of a hotly contested U.S. Senate race, delays were reported in Houston after apparent issues with registration check-in machines at some polling places. Later in the day, a judge ruled that nine Houston-area polling places would stay open beyond the usual closing time after advocacy groups complained that they didn’t open on time and forced many voters to leave without casting ballots.

And in El Paso, the U.S. Border Patrol canceled a crowd control exercise that was scheduled for Tuesday, following criticism from civil liberties groups that it could dissuade people from voting.

Border Patrol agent Fidel Baca confirmed Tuesday that the exercise, in a Latino neighborhood, was canceled but declined to say why. The Texas Civil Rights Project said the exercise, billed by the Border Patrol as a mobile field force demonstration, was to be held within a half-mile (0.8 kilometers) of a polling site.

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Long and Balsamo reported from Washington.

___

Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Boston, Thomas Davies in Indianapolis, Verena Dobnik and Jennifer Peltz in New York, Jennifer Kay in Miami and Ryan Tarinelli in Dallas contributed to this story.

How a Hurricane-Hit Florida County Shored Up Its Voting System

All of America’s political convulsions and contradictions are present in 2018’s midterms—including attacks on voting itself.

In the last 48 hours, President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions reissued threats to crack down on illegal voting by non-citizens, which rarely occurs. That followed the GOP’s most controversial gubernatorial candidate, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, accusing his state’s Democratic Party of hacking into voter rolls—which they ridiculed—and then tweeting that armed blacks were supporting his opponent.

Across the aisle, Democrats and voting advocates have criticized these tactics and publicized other barriers, fighting the worst in court and trying to help individuals in affected states get a ballot. Meanwhile, as Tuesday unfolds, the press is detailing problems in key states like Georgia, creating lines to vote lasting hours.

These gyrations are part of a larger canvas where both sides see “cataclysmic scenarios,” as Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist, put it to USA Today. In most of America, however, voting has not collapsed. High participation rates, as seen by the percentages of people voting early, continued on Tuesday.

And in one slice of the country where the sky did fall, the economy was wrecked and daily life has become truly nightmarish—in Florida’s hurricane-devastated region around Panama City—election officials are not just up and running, and handling record turnout; they are operating one of the country’s most transparent and secure voting systems. In contrast to much of America, they can ensure every ballot will be counted in a manner with virtually no possibility outsiders can hack the results.

“We know we can get a voter checked in in one minute or less, a ballot printed in less than 30 or 40 seconds, and they’re off in the voting booth,” said Mark Andersen, Bay County Supervisor of Elections, describing the start of a meticulous process that he’s staging in a half-dozen “mega voting” sites, all buildings where power was restored.

Andersen was talking in his office inside Bay County’s government center, a sturdy tan brick building next to a school torn apart to its steel beams and homes encircled by mounds of tree debris and ruined possessions. This voting center was in a back storeroom where power had been restored and air conditioning set up to help keep moisture from interfering with the paper ballot processing. Any registered voter in the county could show up and vote there.

As the morning progressed, voters trickled in and out and seemed satisfied, not even knowing that they were walking past a secure room where their ballots and votes would be verified late on Tuesday and early Wednesday to ensure no extra ballots were used, and that every vote cast in every race was accounted for.

“We’ve been busy all morning. We’ve had lines,” said a volunteer manning the front door who said he shouldn’t give his name—a retired county election official. “A lot of people are not working; they have time on their hands and this is right in front of them. With all the news in your face, they figure they can do something about it.”

The system used in Bay County was developed by Andersen and a handful of his peers, notably Leon County’s Mark Earley and Ion Sancho. It comes down to this: paper ballots are printed for voters as they check in, which means at the end of every day of voting early and on Election Day, officials can ensure that the total number of ballots given out, marked and securely collected is the same as the number of voters. That means no illegal voters or ballot box stuffing.

Then the paper ballots are scanned by two separate computer systems that never touch. That gap—only bridged by the paper ballot itself—means there is no way for an outsider or electronic interloper to sabotage the vote-counting electronics.

The first system, in voting centers like Panama City’s ‘mega’ vote center or a local precinct, counts the day’s results. It makes an image of every ballot card scanned and adds up every contest. Then those ballots are returned to secured settings, where they are run through a second scanner creating high-definition images of every ballot, which are used to analyze every marked ballot oval. That system generates two separate totals from the same ballots that can be compared.

If there are discrepancies between computer systems, and sometimes there are, the inventory created by the second scan can trace discrepancies down to the precinct level (actually to the voting machine used) and then allows for a fast retrieval of individual paper ballots in question. That process—of two separate scanners, and paper ballots put into a well-indexed system—is transparent and trustable.

“I review every single ballot,” Andersen said. “I can tell my voters I audit the entire election and I do. [There’s] an independent counting system, an independent audit system, and no files cross. Only the paper [is in common]. I dare you to find anything better … it’s that simple.”

Outside the entrance to the county building, local residents praised the process.

“It’s very important to vote today, because this will make a heck of a lot of difference, and I do believe in change,” said Clara Mincy, a retired educator and now a school bus driver. “A change is gonna come,” said Betty McCray, standing next to her.

When asked if she trusted that her vote would be counted, Mincy said yes.

“I do. Because I think it has been done correct,” she said. “We haven’t had problems like down south. I remember a few problems down south. But I haven’t heard of any in northwest Florida. That’s why I have confidence.”

This article was produced by Voting Booth , a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Immigration Crackdown Puts Abused Women in Double Jeopardy

For 19 years, Adelina, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, endured abuse from her husband while they lived in a small trailer in East Los Angeles with their two daughters. If she told anyone about the abuse or reported him to the police, her husband threatened her, she would be deported and her children would be taken away.

“He was jealous and would beat and rape me,” Adelina told me. “He said I was a burden because I was not working and bringing in money, but my girls were just 2 and 4 years old. After he would be abusive, he would change and bring me flowers and be sweet and nice to the girls. But then, after a month [he] would go back to the way he was. Maybe it is my fault. Maybe that was love. I don’t know. It went on for years.

“I wanted to leave,” she continued, “but I feared I would get caught and be deported, as he constantly told me [I would be]. I felt I was dead as a woman. I felt I was a failure as a mother. I lost all interest in life, but I needed to be there for my children.”

It has been 15 years since Adelina left her husband and found help from Next Door Solutions, a Santa Clara County, Calif., agency that helps victims of domestic violence find safety and independence. The agency gave her shelter and supported her through the legal process of leaving her husband.

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Adelina reflects on why it took her so long to make a change in her life: “I believed [his threats of deportation]. I was afraid of losing my girls.”

She says one of her daughters is now living the same abusive life. “My daughter is going through the same thing. I tell her she is hurting her children. I tell her to wake up. I ask her why she stays. It isn’t love. It’s fear. They know how to manipulate us. I tell her she can live differently.”

Changes in Reporting

Esther Peralez-Dieckmann, executive director of Next Door Solutions, said that her agency has seen a significant decrease in undocumented women seeking restraining orders against domestic partners, which she attributes to current federal immigration enforcement efforts.

“We are seeing drops in requests for other basic needs [as well], like food for families, because of this fear and perception that somehow they will be flagged by governmental agencies,” Peralez-Dieckmann said.

“Like never before, the federal enforcement efforts and movement toward deportation has heightened the level of worry and stress among immigrant survivors and their families.”

Since the Donald Trump’s election, reporting of all crime has dropped in immigrant communities. The Cato Institute, a public policy research organization, reported statistics from Philadelphia, Houston and Denver showing that immigrants fear reporting crimes, especially Latinos.

In particular, there has been a decline in reports of domestic violence and sexual assault among Latinos throughout the country. In Houston, there was a 42.8 percent reduction in the number of rapes reported by Hispanic victims in 2017, while the number of rapes reported by non-Hispanics rose by 8 percent. In Los Angeles, there has been a 25 percent decrease in reports of sexual assault among the Latino community compared to the same period in 2016. Law enforcement experts say this decline is specifically tied to fears of deportation.

Tracking Crime, Not Status

The climate of fear among immigrants is frustrating for local and state law enforcement personnel, who try to let victims of domestic violence know they are there to protect women and children.

“Whether a victim is here legally or not is not our issue. It’s not a question we ask,” Detective Greg Dini of the Morgan Hill, Calif., Police Department told me. “My main goal is to treat that person the same way I’d treat anyone.”

Dini acknowledges the paralyzing fear that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel might be lurking around the courts, but he says that he has not seen that recently.

“We don’t work with ICE, and we don’t share information or status with them,” Dini said. “We want women to call us, regardless of their citizenship status. It’s important they call the first time, as we see violence get progressively worse each time, and it affects the children. It can damage the children for life. We don’t want that.

“Our population is heavily Hispanic, so we try and have a Spanish-speaking officer when we get called,” he added. When no officer fluent in Spanish at hand, technology comes to the rescue. “We all have cellphones in the field that we can call and get a translator immediately.”

Dini said his department reaches out to local domestic violence agencies in the hope that when women go to them, they will learn that law enforcement is there to help, not hurt them.

But even with organizations and law enforcement offering support, victims are often still reluctant to seek help.

“We have seen a decrease in undocumented survivors who are willing to follow through with the civil court process and obtain a restraining order,” Colsaria Henderson, executive director of Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse (CORA), told me. “With the current federal administration’s immigration and detainment practices, victims are scared to reach out for help. They feel they must weigh the risk of safety [against the] possibility of detainment and deportment.”

CORA is based in San Mateo, Calif. “Undocumented domestic violence survivors and families have full access to our services, including crisis counseling and safety planning,” Henderson said. “However, they most often do not qualify for other state and federal benefits that help mitigate the effects of poverty, including food and affordable housing access. Without adequate supportive services, survivors will continue to weigh the risk of leaving an unsafe situation against the possibility that they may not be able to provide food for their children and could end up homeless.”

Sumerle Davis, a deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County’s domestic violence division, says that violence doesn’t get reported often enough, whether the victim is here illegally or not.

“We find the cultural backgrounds play a big part on how people see their circumstances,” Davis said. “Often they see the violence as a family issue and don’t report it.”

Echoing others interviewed for this piece, she said another barrier is that many, especially in the immigrant population, fear law enforcement.

“We struggle to get to them and let them know we are here to help them,” Davis said. “We don’t ask whether they are here legally.”

Davis said the main goal of her division is getting into the community. “We are all about community outreach,” she said. “We go out to many neighborhoods in the county. We go to immigrant organizations and the Latino churches here. We invite people to come to us to talk about crimes in their communities.”

Many family justice centers bring in law enforcement officials, therapists and immigration and family lawyers to talk to women who may be in an abusive relationships but are afraid to call from home. They can come to these centers and find out what they need to know or do, Davis said.

Protective Legislation

As the severity of domestic violence became more visible in the 1990s, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act of 1994—the first all-inclusive federal legislation that provides protection against and prosecution for violence against women. It became part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, and led to improvements in the Violence Against Women Act of 2000.

Two new visas were authorized under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000: the “U” visa for immigrant victims of serious crimes, and the “T” visa for victims of human trafficking.

Recipients of U visas are granted legal status in the U.S. for up to four years. Once they have held the visa for three years, they may be eligible to apply for legal permanent residence.

T visas are assigned to women who have been trafficked in some fashion, such as sex trafficking or being held against their will in domestic service, sweatshops, restaurant kitchens, or factory or farm work. The victim is required to file a “self-petition.” If granted, the victim can stay in the U.S. for up to three years. Sometimes the documents of these women, if any exist, are being withheld from them. In some circumstances, the T visa applies when a victim is smuggled into the country and is forced to work to pay fees to the smuggler for transport. T visas also provide protection to women under 18 who are forced into similar activities.

Domestic Violence Is Cross-Cultural

Titli (not her real name) came to the San Francisco Bay Area from South Asia as a young bride, dreaming of a loving family, safety and dignity. But her husband and his parents, who lived with them, treated Titli as a slave. When she gave birth to her daughter, the abuse intensified because she hadn’t had a son. Verbal, emotional and physical abuse became standard. With a dependent visa, her husband and in-laws constantly threatened to cancel her visa. She was terrified of being thrown out of the country and losing her daughter. All her legal documents were hidden by her husband.

Abusers are adept at using the complicated systems of immigration in the U.S. to maintain control over their victims. With their immigration documents and knowledge about the reporting process withheld from them, victims are doubly persecuted.

One day, in response to an episode of violent physical abuse, a neighbor called the police, and police officers helped Titli call MAITRI, an organization that helps domestic violence victims from South Asia. The first time she called, she cried for several minutes before she could utter a word.

MAITRI helped Titli find space in a domestic violence shelter and then moved her to its transitional house. There, she received intensive case management. Titli filed for a U visa, went back to vocational school and received a new immigration status. She got her driver’s license and practiced English with MAITRI staff and volunteers. The organization also helped her with job search and interview skills.

Like Titli, many battered women are told that if they talk to the police, they will be turned over to immigration, deported and lose custody of their children. These threats keep many women in abusive relationships and damage the children who witness the violence.

Pinpointing abuse and violence can be difficult, especially when language is a barrier and women are in a foreign country illegally, with few or no relationships outside of the family. All too often, helping organizations face a traditional culture of female subservience.

In the Asian community, several generations frequently live in a single home. Melissa Luke, senior program manager for Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI) Asian Women’s Home, told me that a wife may become a victim of her husband’s entire family, as Titli did. If she does not speak English, she is doubly at risk.

The culturally diverse Asian population of Northern California provides a challenge for law enforcement personnel seeking to help in domestic violence cases, because 112 different languages are spoken in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“We have seen circumstances in Asian homes where the mother- and sister-in-law live in the home with the wife,” Luke said. “If the wife calls for help and the police arrive, it’s entirely possible [the police] won’t speak the language in that home. The in-law who speaks English will say they called the police by mistake, and of course, they leave, leaving the wife totally alone and at risk. … [This] is just one example of a larger pattern we’ve seen over time, where the abuser and their family will use language to control the survivor’s access to police and other critical resources.”

Some wives are not allowed to shop for food, drive or go to school. They have little, if any, exposure to the outside world.

Word can also get back to the husband’s family in the native country, who are likely to harass the wife’s family. The victim, knowing her family will have problems back home, is put under even more pressure.

“The abuser is in charge, and it is cultural issues that keep women under control,” Luke said. “The wives don’t know their status. They trust that their husbands are seeking citizenship for them, so they don’t question anything. They are afraid to ask and often are told, if they complain, [that] they will be deported, but if the children are born here, the wife will be sent away without them. They tell them [that] if they go to court and don’t speak the language and don’t have a job, ‘Who do you think the judge will [side with]?’ ”

Sometimes the husband may abuse his wife but be a good father. This adds to the woman’s reluctance to leave. When women do seek help, it is often because violence threatens the children.

Luke told the story of one of her clients who tolerated an abusive relationship until her children were 18 years old. “Why? Because she lived in Cupertino, California, [which] has very highly rated schools. … She stayed for 18 years.

“The main thing for me,” Luke said, “is letting people know there is help available in your language and your community. They need to know there are people in the neighborhood who understand and that we have advocates that can help. … We understand. I’ve been asked, ‘Where did this start?’ It is rooted in a culture all over the world, and it is the culture of patriarchy. It cuts across the whole world and it cuts across all cultures.”

AACI volunteer Namhee Lim was pulled into the world of abused, undocumented women by an incident that shocked her to her bones.

“I didn’t think such things happened in my world, in my church,” Lim said. “A woman was murdered right in front of her children. The community learned the mother was being abused but never told anyone, and [she was] afraid to get help, as she believed she would be deported.”

The incident shocked Lim’s small, close-knit Korean community in San Jose, Calif. Members flocked around the children, who were left without parents—their father went to prison after murdering their mother. Lim stepped up to be an interpreter, bridging the divide between family in Korea and law enforcement in the U.S. Ultimately, the children returned to Korea.

Not all of AACI’s volunteers are Asian women. Many new victims don’t expect to see Robert Brewer, a muscular African-American man, welcome them to the shelter. Brewer knows that, and he goes out of his way to help the women feel comfortable with him, particularly the undocumented immigrant women. “They see me as another threat at first,” he explained. It helps that the staff is there to show women that Brewer is a valued member of the agency.

Brewer first volunteered at a domestic violence shelter because of a personal experience.

“My father abused my mother horribly, and I was not able to help her,” he said. “I joined the Army just to get out of the house. But I realized I could save money in the military, so when I had enough, I got her moved away from him.”

Back then, in the 1980s, there weren’t the laws or support systems that there are now.

“I used to donate to domestic violence agencies,” Brewer said. “But then, when I … couldn’t afford to send money, I decided to see if I could volunteer. Domestic violence issues are very important to me. I feel obligated to help other women get out of that situation.”

’I Dare to Air’

HaNhi Tran, a community-based prosecutor and deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, works on bridging the gap between law enforcement and immigrant communities. One of her endeavors has been to encourage more domestic violence victims to report. Tran speaks on a local Vietnamese radio station to raise awareness about the issue and has developed an art installation that will be on display in various places in the community.

The traveling installation, titled “I Dare to Air,” consists of storyboards highlighting the struggles and triumphs of local domestic violence survivors from diverse ethnic backgrounds—Vietnamese, South Asian, Mexican, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipina and Korean. These survivors’ experiences will be shared alongside traditional dresses from these countries.

The project is a collaboration between many local agencies working to reduce domestic violence.

“Domestic violence occurs across all walks of life, including in our immigrant communities,” Tran said. “In some families, the notion to ‘not air our dirty laundry’ is still very powerful. We hope that by highlighting the experiences of survivors who have been willing to speak out, this will encourage other victims to do the same.”

Republicans Accused of Using Anti-Semitic Smears in Campaign Ads

The killing of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October was a wake-up call for Americans who assumed that anti-Semitism was a remnant of the past.

Many of the responses to the attacks were heartening; Muslims in the U.S. raised $150,000 in only 50 hours for Pittsburgh’s Jewish community. The #showupforshabbat campaign encouraged Jews and non-Jews alike to attend services or dinner on the first Sabbath after the attacks.

Various Republican candidates’ campaigns, however, chose a divisive approach, creating ads that feature anti-Semitic stereotypes and tropes just days after the mass killing.

In Juneau, Alaska, there was a mailer from a local Republican group that, as The Washington Post reports, attacked state Senate candidate Jesse Diehl “with the image of a man stuffing a fat stack of hundred dollar bills into his suit,” trading on stereotypes of linking Jews to money.

In North Carolina, the state GOP created a similar ad with U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also with a stack of bills. The same scenario played out near Seattle, with Democrat Kim Schrier, and in California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Identity, race and often racism have been prominent features of the midterm campaigns, but as the Post observes, “concerns about anti-Semitism and questions about whether it is being fanned by the flames of conspiracy theories and political fearmongering have come to the fore.”

Pamela Nadell, a history professor at American University and the director of its Jewish studies program, told the Post that “what’s stunning is that these are old images that are very similar to those from other eras and other places,” elaborating that “I will say I have not seen images like this in 21st-century America before.”

The ads in Juneau prompted conversations both inside and out of the small local Jewish community. Scott Kendall, the Alaska governor’s chief of staff, who is Jewish, said he asked the group behind the ad, the Republican Women of Juneau, to apologize and put out a statement condemning anti-Semitism, which it has yet to do. It also didn’t respond to the Post’s requests for comment.

In North Carolina, Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state’s Republican Party, was defensive when asked about the Schumer ad, telling the Post, “The question itself, not the mailer, is a racist anti-Semitic smear.” He also told the Post that the question about the ad was “the single dumbest and most outrageous inquiry I’ve ever had from a member of the media.”

In Washington state, the Republican Party claimed the ads were simply showing how Schrier would probably raise taxes.

None of the responses (at least the printed ones) from state Republican parties to the Post’s questions included condemnation of anti-Semitism.

Read the full story here.

 

America Is Staring Autocracy in the Face

Who could forget that moment?  The blue [red] wave — long promised but also doubted — had, however modestly [however massively], hit Washington and [the Democrats had just retaken Congress] [the Republicans had held Congress] [the Democrats had taken the House].  The media, Fox News and the usual right-wing websites aside, hailed the moment. [Fox News and the usual right-wing websites cheered the president on.] Donald Trump’s grip on America had finally been broken [reinforced].  Celebrations were widespread.  Congressional investigations, possibly even impeachment, were only months and a new Congress away [were now a faint memory], and it was then, of course, that the unexpected struck.  It was then that President Trump, citing national security concerns and a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, began the process whose end point we, of course, already know…

Okay, consider that the dystopian me speaking.  We don’t, of course, really know how our story yet ends, not faintly.  While I was writing this piece, I didn’t even know how Tuesday’s vote would turn out, though by the time you read it, you may.  Given the experience of election 2016, it would take a brave [foolish] soul to make a prediction this time around.

I certainly learned a lesson that November.  During the previous months of campaigning that election season, I never wrote a piece at TomDispatch that didn’t leave open the possibility of Donald Trump winning the presidency.  In the couple of weeks before that fateful November day, however, I got hooked on the polling results and on Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website and became convinced that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in.

Of course, I was in good company.  As Michael Wolff would later report in his bestselling book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, on election eve, few in the Trump campaign, including the candidate himself, expected to win.  Most of them, again including The Donald, were already trying to parlay what they assumed was an assured loss into their next jobs or activities, including in the candidate’s case a possible “Trump network.”

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So when, sometime after midnight, reality finally began to sink in — fittingly enough, I had a 103-degree fever and was considering heading for an emergency room — I was as disbelieving as the president-to-be. (He had, Wolff tells us, “assured” his wife, Melania, who was reportedly in tears of anything but joy that night, that he would never win and that she would never find herself in the White House.)  By then, it was for me a fever dream to imagine that bizarre, belligerent, orange-haired salesman-cum-con-artist entering the Oval Office.

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.  During election campaign 2016, I grasped much of this.  I wrote of the future president, for instance, as a con artist (particularly in reference to those taxes of his that we couldn’t see) and how Hillary Clinton’s crew hadn’t grasped the obvious: that many Americans would admire him for gaming the system, even if they couldn’t do the same themselves.  As I wrote at the time: “It’s something Donald Trump knows in his bones, even if all those pundits and commentators and pollsters (and for that matter Hillary Clinton’s advisers) don’t: Americans love a con man.”

I also saw that he was daring in ways unimaginable to an American politician — because, of course, he wasn’t one — particularly in promoting his slogan, MAGA, whose key word few of the political cognoscenti paid the slightest attention to: “again.”  At that moment, for presidents or politicians who wanted to become just that, it was obligatory to claim that the United States wasn’t just great but the greatest, most exceptional, most indispensable land ever.  (As Hillary Clinton typically put it that election season: “America is indispensable — and exceptional — because of our values.”)  Trump’s “again” in Make America Great Again suggested something quite different and so rang a bell in the heartland.  In the process, he became America’s first declinist presidential candidate. Early that October, I wrote this:

“[A] significant part of the white working class, at least, feels as if, whether economically or psychologically, its back is up against the wall and there’s nowhere left to go.  Under such circumstances, many of these voters have evidently decided that they’re ready to send a literal loose cannon into the White House; they’re willing, that is, to take a chance on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses on them. That is the new and unrecognizable role that Donald Trump has filled.  It’s hard to conjure up another example of it in our recent past. The Donald represents, as a friend of mine likes to say, the suicide bomber in us all. And voting for him, among other things, will be an act of nihilism, a mood that fits well with imperial decline.

“Think of him as a message in a bottle washing up on our shore…”

And yet, on that day of decision, I evidently reverted to the boy I had once been, the boy who grew up with a vision of an idealized America that would always do the right thing.  So I was shocked to the core by Donald Trump’s victory.

In that fever dream of a night, when he washed up on all our shores, I had certainly been trumped, but then, so had he, so had we all.  Under the circumstances, I’m sure you’ll understand why I’ve remained hesitant about putting my faith in polls in this election season or giving special significance to reports that the White House staff was glum as hell about the coming midterms and expected the worst. (After all, mightn’t this be that Michael Wolff election night all over again?)

The American Shooting Gallery

Two years after that fateful November night in 2016, we’re still living in a fever dream of some sort, enveloped 24/7 by the universe of President Trump and the “fake news media,” that provides him and the rest of us with a strange, all-encompassing echo chamber.  America, you might say, now has a 103-degree temperature and there isn’t an emergency room in sight.

And it’s unlikely to get better, whatever happens in the midterm elections.  Those who expect that a Democratic victory or a devastating Mueller report in the weeks to come will be the beginning of the end for the Trump presidency (or, for that matter, that the victory of an ever more extreme Republican Party will simply prove more of the grisly same) might want to reconsider. Perhaps it’s worth weighing other grimmer possibilities in the as-yet-unending rise of what’s still called “right-wing populism,” not just locally but globally.  Here in the United States, with hate and venom surging (and, yes indeed, being encouraged by President Trump for his own purposes), a genuinely ugly strain central to this country’s history is being resurrected.  In the process, a burgeoning number of deeply disturbed (and deeply animated) figures from among the most over-armed civilian population on the planet — Yemen, of all the grim places, comes in a distant second — are turning this country into a shooting gallery.

Win or lose today, don’t think that the Donald Trump we have is the one we’re fated to have until the day he goes down in flames. He is distinctly a work in progress, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say: in regress.  In that context, let me mention an evolution of a grim sort in my own thinking over the last two years.

For some time now there have been both thinkers and activists who have been convinced that Donald Trump is an American Mussolini, an outright fascist.  (According to his ex-wife, in the early 1990s he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedsideand, during the 2016 election campaign, he retweeted a Mussolini quote, defending himself for doing so.)  I’ve always disagreed, however.  To my mind, he’s clearly been a man who wants to be idolized and adulated (as happens at any of his rallies) — wants, that is, to have fans, not (in the fascistic sense) followers; applause and the eternal spotlight, not a social movement.  That, it seems to me, has been an accurate description of the president who entered the Oval Office and occupied it in such a suggestive way these last nearly two years.  But I’ve recently started to wonder.  After all, once upon a time, Donald Trump wasn’t a Republican either.  Let’s face it, he’s a quick learner when it comes to whatever may benefit The Donald.

And keep in mind that he entered an unsettled world already well prepared for such a presidency by his predecessors in Washington.  If the fascist or, if you prefer, autocratic tendency that lurks in him and in the situation that surrounds him does come out more fully, he will obviously be aided by the ever more imperial presidency that was created in the decades before he left Trump Tower for the White House.

When he entered the Oval Office, he found there a presidency in which — particularly on the subject of war (the president was, for instance, already America’s global assassin-in-chief) — his powers increasingly stood outside both Congress and the Constitution. The weapons he’s now bringing to bear, including executive orders and the U.S. military, were already well prepared for him.  The refugees he makes such effective use of, whether from Syria or Central America, came to him, at least in part, thanks to this country’s war and other policies that had already roiled significant parts of the planet.  Before entering the Oval Office, the only aspect of such preparations he had any role in was the increasingly staggering inequality that gave a “populist” billionaire president, always ready to put more money in the hands of his .01% pals, a pained but receptive audience in the heartland.

In other words, this world and the fever dream that goes with it were Donald Trump’s oyster before he ever lifted a finger in the White House.  As a result, no election results, no matter whether the Democrats or the Republicans “win,” are likely to bring that temperature down.  In fact, if the Democrats do take the House (or even Congress), Donald Trump is unlikely to become more pliable.  If the Mueller report results in impeachment proceedings in the House, he won’t be humbled.  In the face of any such development, my guess is that his impulse will be to become more autocratic, more imperial, and even possibly more fascistic.  And the same may hold if the Republicans hang onto both houses of Congress.

Waiting for the Red Hats

Even before the vote was in, the evidence was there.  In the lead-up to the election, 5,000-plus U.S. troops (or maybe 15,000?) are headed for the U.S.-Mexico border to deal with what the president has called both an “invasion” and a “national emergency.” (“Fake news!”) There, those troops will essentially twiddle their thumbs (since they are legally allowed to do little) simply because the president wanted it so.  There may, in fact, be two soldiers for every desperate refugee, including children and babies, headed toward the U.S. border in that now notorious “caravan” from Honduras.  In other words, on a whim, Donald Trump is already capable of building a wall (of troops) at that border.  The question worth asking is this: In an embattled near-future moment in which a truly Trumpian military figure (think of “him” as the next John Bolton) is in place as secretary of defense and another “national emergency” is declared, where might those troops go next because the president wanted it so?

In the days before the election, the president also threatened to sign an executive order to nullify birthright citizenship — in the process, threatening to functionally nullify the Constitution (see the 14th Amendment), while bringing back to life the ugliest strains of American racial history just because he wanted it so.  At the moment, he might not even sign that order or, if he does, it might go down big time in Congress and the courts.  But who knows what the future of an executive-order presidency holds, especially with another Supreme Court justice pick or two in place, no matter who controls Congress?

As for those rallies of his: tell me you can’t conceive of a future America in which his adulatory crowds have stopped simply cheering and shouting for him (“Build the wall!” “Lock her up!”) and are now marching for him as well.  Is it really so hard to imagine a future in which there would be a place for a Trump Corps or for “the Red Hats”; for, that is, the kind of social movement that would no longer be confined to the arenas and stadiums of red-state America or even the polling booths of Election Day, one that might indeed be in the streets of this country at the beck and call of a fierce and autocratic billionaire?

In an increasingly unsettled world, an Autocrats, Incorporated moment globally, with an ever more powerful chief executive, and a right wing still on the march, everything that Donald Trump inherited could certainly be intensified further.  And he might be just the man to do it.  In a world in which Congress is no longer fully in his camp, in which legal charges against him, his family, and his cronies only grow, to adapt a title from a Russian novel of the early twentieth century, unquiet could flow The Don — and in that lies peril for us all.

Now, excuse me, I’m heading out to vote.

Has America Gone Insane?

What does United States of America stand for nowadays if political division is at an all time high? Is it still the land of the free if America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world? Are we still the home of the brave if we refuse to stand up to injustice, because it would compromise our pocketbook? This disconnection from reality is the definition of psychosis. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author, and activist Chris Hedges, has made it his life’s work to highlight this inequity and combat the complacency of the consumerist culture. In a 2010 essay published on Adbusters, Hedges caught the eye of filmmaker Amanda Zackem, when he succinctly spelled out the problems with totalitarian capitalism and corporate power. Those ideas deeply resonated with Zackem and caused her to reach out to Hedges about bringing his essay into the cinematic realm in order to expose them to a larger audience. This week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “American Psychosis,” is the result of that process and their attempt to make people think more deeply about the world we’re living in.

“We live in an unbalanced, exploitation-based system and that’s not morally right or just. The issues of totalitarian capitalism and totalitarian corporate power need to be discussed more openly and honestly in our national dialogue,” says Zackem. “To be clear, totalitarian capitalism is not sustainable and should not be intertwined with our government. Most people don’t realize how their consumer choices negatively impact the world – environmentally, socially, culturally, politically, globally.” Without going deep into the trenches, the short documentary illuminates many of these issues. However, with its hard-lined perspective, “American Psychosis” serves as a vital entry point to critically observing, thinking, and acting on the imbalances one sees in society. “I learned long ago that you can’t change anybody unless they want to change themselves. With this in mind, my intention when making this film was to encourage people to begin to think critically about the world we live in as opposed to just going through our daily motions. Most of us aren’t even aware of the oppressive, inequitable systems we are a part of, or if we are, we choose not to look, or not to talk about it, because it is uncomfortable. I want people to question the world we live in, the systems we’ve set up. I want people to self-reflect and take personal responsibility for our current situation. Why do we allow it to continue? What are we afraid of? How can we co-create and help each other live and thrive as individuals and as a community?”

The Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Using those words as a rubric, one can’t help but acknowledge the widespread injustice happening across our society and question our government’s interests. Traditionally totalitarian mechanisms are being used to silence dissenters, imprison people without due process, challenge the freedom of the press, promote hatred between different ethnic groups, and destroy the humanities and arts. “I believe in the ripple effect and that every person’s energy – be it big or small actions towards positive change – is powerful and vital to a functioning democracy,” says Zackem. “This film is my contribution to this larger dialogue.” As the United States moves closer to the November 6th midterm election, each citizen must ask themselves what they want for this country and how to best achieve it. The first step is to vote, which is the easiest and best way to contribute to that change.

Vimeo: Thinking about American society since the 2016 presidential election (post international fiascos, post Brett Kavanaugh, and more), what from Chris’s words seem most important or prescient?

Zackem: Chris’s closing line, “You can’t talk about hope until you can see reality and reality is pretty bleak, but that’s the starting point.”  That line has really stayed with me. We need to bring truth, honesty and compassion back into our national dialogue, and move past the attacks and distortion of the truth, to reach a place where hard concepts and real truth exists so we can actually accomplish positive change.

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Has the US collectively gone insane? Do we have a misunderstanding of the wider world, of who we are, and where we’re going?

The United States is a very strange place when you really think about it. We celebrate freedom and yet we live in a nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. We have tons of money, but people go bankrupt and/or die because they can’t afford healthcare.  We have an abundance of food, much of which ends up in the trash, yet so many children and families are going hungry. Our education system is a mess. Teachers aren’t paid properly, nor do they have enough funding or resources to do their job. Our universities are putting our youth into massive debt.  Women are still not paid as much as men; the list goes on and on. And yet in the United States productivity has never been higher but average wages have been virtually stagnant since the 1970’s. Corporations pay hardly any taxes and hide their money abroad and our governmental system somehow allows this to continue?  All of this, as Chris highlights, is totally insane.

Has the corporate state made a war against the humanities?

Yes. Look around. The humanities in the United States have been getting beaten down for a while now. The digital age has created impatience and dissolution of substance.  We live in the land of fast paced, pop culture. Everything is created to sell to the consumer who at best has to somehow sift through layers of corporate manipulation in search of inner truth, or at worst doesn’t even recognize or question their actions in the world. Our current culture leaves no time for emotional processing or reflection, instead we simply move on to the next headline or viral video. We live in a culture of distraction.

The humanities reason for existence is to stimulate critical thought. Once critical thought is replaced by overt and subliminal consumer messaging there are no more humanities, and even more sadly, we begin to lose our own humanity.

If they have not yet been outright defunded or cast aside in place of more “productive” STEM initiatives, many pursuits of the humanities have themselves been co-opted by market forces. Pieces of art sell for many millions of dollars at auctions as they’re not valued for their cultural impact and aesthetic beauty, but rather, as an investment opportunity sure to yield high gains.

What Chris says about totalitarian cultures being hyper masculine in their nature and how they seek to banish empathy seems extremely topical now. Is there any way to combat any of the toxic masculinity that seems to be so pervasive these days?

To combat hyper masculinity, we need to bring the words compassion and empathy back into our national lexicon. The solution starts from the bottom up by teaching our youth how to interact with our earth and each other in a caring and compassionate way. It’s rather telling that we are a culture that exploits the earth – a fundamentally feminine entity and creator of life – throwing it out of balance in the name of war, consumerism and progress. To combat this hyper masculine system, we need to live in reality and that means fundamentally dismantling the patriarchal system of domination fueled by consumerism. We must release the fear that global capitalism and exploitation of the earth are the only ways for us to exist in the world.

If there is a main takeaway from your film, what do you hope people leave with?

My intention for the viewer is that they walk away with knowledge and a direct connection to their own creative life force, rather than one specific message. My focus was to get the viewer to engage in the process of critical thinking. Our culture is disempowering – so much telling and knowing that there’s really no space for the average person to engage with a critical and creative thought process. The film was intended to question this situation, thereby opening up a space for more open dialogue and to stimulate a process of creative critical thinking.

What does it mean to be human to you?

To be human is to move through your life processes honestly, consciously and as compassionately as possible. The human experience to me is as much intuitive as it is physical. What you create and co-create will exist, ripple and be the container to your personal human experience.

What are you working on now?

After screenings of “American Psychosis” in film festivals and community screenings around the world, local bookstores often sold out of Hedges’ books. The film initiated discussion about the difficulty in creating art that elicits emotion, critical thought, and action, and how this film provided a vessel for all. This film has instigated conversation about how consumerism and corporate power should not be what unites us, and inspired people to get involved in changing these structures. Witnessing these reactions, I began envisioning an entire collection of such films. I imagined what could result from featuring diverse voices to spread information that is underrepresented in the current for-profit media. Thus, American Canary was born.

I co-founded American Canary, a nonprofit that will produce and distribute films like “American Psychosis,” with three amazing women: Laura Yale, Bridget Haina and Lindsay Newman.  We call it cinematic whistleblowing. American Canary’s films will address social justice and equality issues and will be housed on our advocacy-driven, online platform. The films will be an entry point to hard-to-tackle topics, and then we will create a bank of resources for audiences to further education and take-action, reflecting our belief that change happens from the ground up.

Our second film based on the work of economist Richard Wolff is currently in post-production and we have partnered with Haymarket Books to feature other authors and activists we admire. We are excited to create mutually-beneficial collaborations that support authors and fund the making of these films while ensuring all reach their full potential as powerful instruments of positive social change.

AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS from Amanda Zackem on Vimeo.