Chris Hedges's Blog, page 437

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro Is the Fascist Face of Neoliberalism

In less than a week, Brazil will vote to elect its next president in what’s widely considered the most consequential election in Brazil’s history.

On one side is Fernando Haddad — a soft-spoken academic, former Minister of Education for the Workers Party (PT), and recent mayor of São Paulo most remembered for painting bike lanes across Brazil’s economic capital. Haddad faces Jair Bolsonaro — a former military man and long-time member of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies representing Rio de Janeiro. Bolsonaro’s extreme far-right overtures have earned him the distinction of being compared to Trump, Duterte, and Hitler.

Brazil’s democracy is younger than I am, and follows a brutal period of military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. Tragically, this election process hasn’t been a rigorous debate of ideas for the improvement of our country. Instead, it’s testing the very fate of our democracy.

Bolsonaro, whose running mate is a retired army general, has built a campaign on his disdain for democracy and glorification of authoritarianism. He’s gained infamy worldwide for past comments praising torturers and for asserting during a 1999 televised appearance that the Brazilian dictatorship should have executed “at least 30,000” people. As a presidential candidate, Bolsonaro has called for political opponents to be shot, promised to deny the legitimacy of any election results that don’t declare him the winner, and refused to partake in debates ahead of the general elections.

Bolsonaro took the lead in the first round of voting with 47 percent of valid votes. In the ten days that followed, there were over 50 catalogued incidents of physical attacks and threats carried out by Bolsonaro supporters in 18 states and the federal district, including the murder of a Bolsonaro critic by a supporter at a bar in the state of Bahia.

Given this backdrop of anti-democratic demagoguery, incitement of violence, and virulent bigotry, it might feel inappropriate to give Bolsonaro’s candidacy the benefit of a judgement of merit. However, not only does the high possibility of a Bolsonaro presidency force us to contend with the implications of his policy proposals, it requires us to understand that neoliberalism isn’t only a feature of his candidacy — it’s the means by which his candidacy has been made viable.

The 1964 dictatorship in Brazil was installed by a military coup aimed at blocking the administration of a president who was seen at the time being as too left-wing. The coup was supported by many well-to-do Brazilians at the time. “And why not?” journalist Vincent Bevins asked recently in the New York Review of Books. “If you were rich and stayed in line politically, things were never that bad—this kind of nostalgia [is] often reproduced in media and historical memory.”

Recent surveys have found that 55 percent of Brazilians wouldn’t mind a non-democratic form of government if it “solved problems.” And Brazilians have legitimate problems, among which healthcare, citizen security, corruption, unemployment, and education have ranked as highly important in recent polls.

Bolsonaro’s campaign recipe has not only been to promote — through no shortage of lies and misinformation — shortcuts to democratic and civic processes. He’s also aligned himself with corporate and financial interests, attracting support from moderates willing to overlook, understate, and ultimately masque his fascist nature by leaning into his recently-adopted free-market agenda.

While support for Bolsonaro was initially highest among rich white men and Evangelical Christians, it’s impossible to win the 49 million votes he received in the first round without support from a larger swathe of the population. Bolsonaro gained that support because this election has been driven to a significant degree by what Brazilians are against rather than by what they are for.

“The core of Bolsonarism,” a Jacobin article says, “is hatred of the organized working class, of trade unions, which today…is incarnated in PT and, above all, in the image of Lula,” Brazil’s former president, for whom Haddad is filling in as candidate. Lula, who is in jail on flimsy bribery charges, has not been allowed to run.

But why so much hatred for PT? The party was recently in power for over 13 years, or three and a half presidential terms, spanning the tenures of Lula and former President Dilma Rousseff. Lula’s investment in social programs during a time of booming economic expansion in Brazil has been credited with lifting 30 million Brazilians out of poverty, and for giving poor, Black and Brown, female, and otherwise disadvantaged Brazilians unprecedented opportunity for advancement.

Tensions grew under Dilma’s tenure over her mismanagement of the economy. Socioeconomic indicators began to reverse course as Brazil entered into one the worst recession of the last quarter century. Coupled with her support for the massive anti-corruption investigation taking place, which implicated a large proportion of the sitting members of Congress, political opponents saw her as a problem to resolve quickly. They conspired to successfully impeach her from office in a process that’s been described by many as a “soft” coup d’état.

Dilma was succeeded by a coalition-government member from a center party, then-Vice President Michel Temer, who has spent the last two years overseeing the implementation of severe austerity measures and other reforms that have especially hurt the poor and the previously-growing middle class.

This election is marked with widespread and deep resentment for the PT’s handling of the economy. But the PT is also unreasonably singled out for its role in corruption. Haddad recently recognized PT’s errors on the economy and their role in corruption in a public mea culpa, promising reform if elected.

But the selective scapegoating of PT when it comes to corruption is unfair for several reasons. First of all, it was during a PT administration that the country’s largest corruption investigation in the country’s history was enabled. The singular focus on the PT is also incongruent with Brazilians’ perception of corruption generally, and fails to consider the ubiquity of corruption across political parties in our government.

Over 83 percent of Brazilians believe that more than half of all politicians are corrupt. And their perceptions aren’t totally off: more than half of Brazilian senators and one third of the members of Brazil’s lower chamber of Congress face criminal accusations. Bolsonaro has taken advantage of this anti-PT, anti-left, anti-government, anti-corruption sentiment by touting extra-democratic governance and adopting a neoliberal agenda.

But history always offers a well of insights. “It’s really strange that so many people now believe that the military regime somehow delivered safety to Brazilians or managed the economy well, since, by the end of the 1970s, they were very often seen as corrupt and incompetent, and crime statistics were worsening due to the government’s own policies,” historian Marcos Napolitano told the New York Review of Books.

Napolitano’s research, Bevins writes, “has shown that by encouraging mass migration into urban slums with no public services, and allowing a militarized police to routinely use extra-judicial killings to control marginalized populations, the dictatorship actually set the country on the path toward its current widespread violence.”

Widespread violence and public security have been a leading concern for Brazilians for many years, and a key invocation in Bolsonaro’s campaign. Brazil, already claiming the position of world leader in homicides, set a new record by registering nearly 64,000 homicides over the last year. Most victims were young Black men from poor urban areas.

“We have two persistent phenomena: violence against women and criminal gangs dealing in drugs and arms,” said Renato Sérgio de Lima, director of the Brazilian Public Security Forum. This violence is largely linked to poverty and inequality — including the criminalization of poverty in Brazil. Dealing with it requires a comprehensive intervention that starts with significant investment in and economic inclusion of marginalized communities.

Bolsonaro’s remedy? Ease gun laws for citizens, give policemen carte blanche to kill, build more prisons, and expand military-controlled schools.

In contrast to the nationalistic economic tendencies gleaned from his 27-year Congressional voting record, Bolsonaro has chosen Paulo Guedes, a “Chicago Boy” neoliberal economist, as his main economic advisor. Guedes’s policy recommendations include privatizing almost all state-run companies, opening up the Amazon to foreign development, and further cutting social spending.

Guedes is currently under investigation for possible securities fraud, but the irony is clearly lost on Bolsonaro supporters. Bolsonaro’s economic promises, many of them documented on Instagram, include across-the-board deregulation, a refusal to tax the wealthy and their inheritances, a commitment to cutting taxes overall, and a reduction to Bolsa Família, a successful conditional cash transfer program, under the guise of fighting fraud in the system.

Bolsonaro has capitalized on Brazil’s deep economic and social inequality to push for an agenda that will undoubtedly drive even bigger rifts into the Brazilian socioeconomic fabric and further disenfranchise the country’s most vulnerable people. We must fight to defend our democracy and human rights. But we should not lose sight of the importance of fighting the corporate and financial powers that are not only extractive in their own right, but are also being used as vehicles for authoritarianism.

Anti-Muslim Campaign Rhetoric Climbs to Previously Unseen Heights

Emboldened by President Donald Trump’s speeches and anti-Muslim legislation, candidates across the country have openly incorporated Islamophobic claims into their campaigns leading up to the midterm elections. The rise, according to a new report from Muslim Advocates, is dramatic, and, as The Guardian reports, the campaigns are using “tactics that echo attempts to inflame fears around immigrants and people of color.”

The report examined 80 campaigns around the U.S. that have used some kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric since 2016, nearly all Republican. Researchers found that 64 percent of those candidates are already either elected or appointed officials, or brag about their presidential endorsements. In addition, The Guardian observes:

More than a third have claimed that Muslims are inherently violent or pose an imminent threat, the report found, and have propagated the existence of a Muslim conspiracy to take over communities or infiltrate government. Just under a third of the candidates considered have called for Muslims to be denied basic rights or declared that Islam is not a religion.

Among the specific examples, the report mentions California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who, despite being indicted for alleged misuse of campaign funds, still has wide support in his district, as the HuffPost observed this week.

As part of shoring up that support, Hunter “Ran an attack ad suggesting his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, was a ‘security risk … working to infiltrate Congress,’ ” The Guardian writes. “The television spot invoked Campa-Najjar’s Mexican-Palestinian heritage and claimed without evidence that he was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

In Virginia, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, ran an ad attacking Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger for her work as a substitute teacher at a Saudi-funded school for a few months in 2002 and 2003.

“Spanberger doesn’t want us to know that she taught at an Islamic school nicknamed Terror High, a terrorist breeding ground,” the ad says. Spanberger, who is running for a House seat against Tea Party member Dave Brat, had been teaching at the school while waiting for the CIA and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to process her security clearances. She had previously disclosed this information, Think Progress notes.

In Texas, Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood, who was defeated in a Democracy primary when he sought re-election this year, said that Islam is “basically a political system wrapped in a religion.” According to The Intercept’s analysis of his remarks, LaHood implied that “when fully implemented, [Islam] could produce only terrorists.”

Scott Simpson, public advocacy director of Muslim Advocates, told The Guardian, “We’ve seen anti-Muslim candidates running in every region. … We’ve seen them running at every level of office, from the school and planning boards all the way to governor and Congress. We’ve seen it in liberal places and conservative places.”

Even as ads like those in California and Virginia continue to air, there is some evidence they don’t work. Simpson says the accusations are not popular with voters, and The Guardian points out that of the 80 campaigns studied, “Only 11–14 percent–were elected or are safely projected to win in November.”

Read the report here.

Trump Vows to Reduce Central American Aid Over Migrants

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. would begin “cutting off, or substantially reducing” aid to three Central American nations over a migrant caravan heading to the U.S. southern border.

Trump tweeted: “Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.”

The three countries combined received more than $500 million in funding from the U.S. in fiscal year 2017, though it was not immediately clear how much Trump is seeking to cut.

The Monday morning tweets marked the latest escalation by the president, who is seeking to re-inject immigration politics into the national conversation in the closing weeks of the midterm elections.

On a three-day campaign swing to Western states last week, Trump raised alarm over thousands of migrants traveling through Mexico to the U.S. and threatened to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border if they weren’t stopped.

As the migrants continued their northward march about 900 miles from the U.S. border, Trump tweeted that, “Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan.

He added: “I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy.” White House officials could not immediately provide details.

A Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, said the Pentagon has received no new orders to provide troops for border security.

Never-Before-Seen Emails Expose the Trumps’ Corrupt Business Practices

In November 2007, The Wall Street Journal infuriated Donald Trump with an article that dissected his recent real estate setbacks. Headlined “Stalled Condo Projects Tarnish Trump’s Name,” the report raised doubt about what the mogul treasured — and banked on — most in business: the value of his personal brand.

Trump responded with a 512-word letter to the editor. Calling the story “one of the most ridiculous I have read in many years,” he complained that it ignored his “tremendous successes with massive projects” and instead focused on “small jobs” in the Florida cities of Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. He dismissed both as licensing deals “for which I am not responsible for development.”

Trump’s reaction offers another capsule of his habit of twisting the truth regarding his real estate deals — one of the patterns revealed in a recent ProPublica and WNYC investigation, “Pump and Trump,” which focused on a deal in Panama. That article concluded that, contrary to the Trumps’ longtime claims that they merely licensed their name, they were deeply involved in their deals.

A trove of until-now unreported emails from inside the Trump Organization, unearthed during a lawsuit against the company filed after the Tampa project collapsed — the building was never constructed — sheds light not only on a U.S. Trump project, but also provides a rare glimpse inside the organization. (The suit, filed by people who had paid deposits in advance to buy condo units, was eventually settled, with the buyers receiving partial refunds of their deposits.) The documents provide copious detail on one of the “small jobs” that Trump would later claim he had merely lent his name to. And they reveal the same patterns of behavior seen in “Pump and Trump.”

The patterns include the Trump Organization’s decision to team with an inexperienced group of developers — led by a former professional wrestler, in this instance — who planned to construct a 52-story tower on a parcel that they belatedly discovered couldn’t support such a structure without millions of dollars in extra work. The patterns also involved false statements by Trump claiming he had an ownership stake in the development. And they included Trump’s claims that the project was sold out — which were contradicted by a letter in which he notified the developers that they were in violation of their licensing agreement because they had sold less than 70 percent of the units. Finally, there were hefty potential fees for Trump, a beneficial insider deal for his son and plenty of evidence that the Trump Organization’s involvement — including failed efforts to rescue the development — extended far beyond the use of the Trump name.

The Trump Organization did not respond to a detailed list of questions provided to it, nor did a White House spokesperson.

In an interview, the lead Tampa developer, Jody Simon, said of Trump, “I don’t blame Donald for the demise of the project.” He attributed its eventual failure to weakness in the real estate market at the time. Still, Simon said of the Trumps: “If everything’s going good, everybody wants a piece of it. If it goes bad, they don’t know anything.”

The Tampa project began, as did many Trump endeavors, with improbable partners: five Tampa-area businessmen eager to develop a 1.5-acre downtown site they owned. The group’s managing partner was Simon, a burly retired professional wrestler with a shaved head who had brawled under the name Joe Malenko and drove a Rolls-Royce. After retiring from the ring, Simon had launched, and sold, a successful medical-education company with his partner Frank Dagostino, a second member of the developer group. The three others were a local builder and a dentist who’d partnered with a real estate broker. The five men incorporated as SimDag/Robel LLC. Collectively, they’d developed some strip shopping centers and condo projects. None had ever built anything approaching a 600-foot office tower.

A New Jersey real estate broker named Roman Osadchuk introduced them to executives at the Trump Organization in May 2004. From there, things moved rapidly.

As they did in such deals, Trump’s team negotiated upfront fees in return for licensing his name. The final terms: $4 million (to be paid in monthly installments), as an advance against 50 percent of all project profits. The Trump Organization, it would turn out, did not vet the developers closely. But the company was strict in one respect: It insisted that the developers personally guarantee the licensing fees.

Trump’s involvement wasn’t limited to selling his name. The licensing agreement gave him “review and approval rights” for virtually every aspect of the project. It required physical delivery to the Trump Organization of “all plans and specifications” for building design, engineering, floor plans, fixtures, lighting, exterior landscaping, and all sales and marketing materials — even the location and layout of the sales office. All were subject to “written confirmation that they comply with the Trump Standards,” an issue on which Trump himself would be the “sole judge.” The Trump Organization was to have access to the property and all project records at all times.

But first, there was the matter of the name. The Florida developers had been referring to the building, planned to rise along the Hillsborough River, as the “Tampa Riverside Plaza” project and were considering new versions in the vein of the “Trump Riverside” or the “Trump Tampa Riverside.” Trump quickly scuttled those ideas. “He strongly prefers Trump Tower Tampa,” Trump Organization executive vice president Russell Flicker told them, according to one of the emails that Trump’s company provided in litigation. And so it would be.

By early October 2004, the developers and the Trump Organization had worked out a contract. “I think we’re going to sign the deal this Thursday or Friday,” Flicker advised the Trump marketing chief, Jill Cremer, on Oct. 5. Flicker also relayed plans for a key part of the signing process: “you and I will go in together when we sign the deal to bring DJT the check, etc.” (Spelling and punctuation have been rendered as they appear in the original emails.)

After the papers were signed on Oct. 27, the Trump team and the developers began making plans for the promotional rollout, which would include, as with all Trump’s projects, taping an exultant video. As Cremer explained in an email to the Tampa team, “He has always accommodated us on these things in the past, although only for no more than about 30 minutes (he is very quick!)”

This would happen on Jan. 10, 2005, at 9:30 a.m., Cremer advised New York executives, including Donald Trump Jr., in an email: “Jody Simon and his partners on the Trump Tower Tampa project will be here to meet with Donald and ‘symbolically’ sign the agreement for photo-op purposes. This will take approximately 15 minutes.”

The Trump marketing machine kicked into action. “It’s a great honor for me to be involved with building what I think will be the greatest building in Florida, and it’ll be right in Tampa,” Trump declared in the 58-second video. “I have the finest partners you can imagine. They’re looking only at quality … It’ll just be a spectacular building — and the tallest building around! … You will love Trump Tower Tampa!”

The $220-million tower was touted in a press release as a “Donald J. Trump Signature Property” — an “ultra-luxury” building featuring concierge and valet services, a fitness center and spa, a fine art collection, and “imported marble floors with inlaid onyx highlights.” Its 190 condos would command prices ranging from $700,000 to more than $6 million.

In February 2005, Trump appeared in Tampa, on one of his two contractually required all-expenses-paid marketing visits. (Maximum length: six “working hours.”) He arrived in a black limo with his new wife, Melania, sweeping into town “like a crown prince,” as a story in the St. Petersburg Times (which has since changed its name to the Tampa Bay Times) described it. Greeted by Tampa’s mayor, Trump was the showcase attraction at a gala marketing event for more than 600 invitees.

Spurred by excited belief in Trump’s Midas touch — and about his personal commitment to the Tampa project — reservations for the condos, requiring a 10 percent refundable deposit, were going fast. Trump said that 98 percent of the 190 units had been reserved even before he touched down in Tampa, according to a St. Petersburg Times article at the time, and he had more than a hundred “backup” reservations.

In his letter to The Wall Street Journal, Trump would assert the Tampa building ultimately “sold out.” That statement was false. Court documents show only 109 of the tower’s reservations (57 percent of the building) turned into actual sales.

Those sales were achieved with the help of some deception about Trump’s financial involvement. During his February 2005 appearance in Tampa, he told the St. Petersburg Times reporters that he already held “substantial” equity in the project and wanted to boost his stake, but his partners wouldn’t let him because “when they’re selling that well they don’t let you do that.”

In truth, Trump hadn’t invested a dime — a fact he was keeping secret, with the help of a strict confidentiality provision in his licensing agreement, which barred anybody in the project from revealing Trump’s lack of equity.

Trump also said his son Donald Jr., who would emerge as a point man on the deal for the Trump Organization, was buying a unit in the building.

Donald Jr. would indeed make plans to jointly buy one unit with three Trump Organization colleagues — on sweetheart terms not offered to other buyers. They got a discounted price, a reduced down payment (5 percent) and the right to sell before the building was completed, according to emails that emerged in litigation. The Tampa developers helped arrange a sale that was to net the three insiders a quick $200,000 profit; emails show the two sides also discussed backdating paperwork to assure the gain would get favorable tax treatment. (Ultimately, the project failed before Donald Jr. and his colleagues could make any profits, the emails suggest.)

But those plans — and many others — ran into obstacles. Construction, scheduled to start in the spring of 2005, still hadn’t begun by early 2006, spurring rumors that the project was in trouble. The developers offered reassurances. Buyers who dropped out had been replaced “within hours,” one of the partners told the Tampa Tribune. “We’re absolutely going to build this building.”

That was less than certain. In testing the ground at the site, the developers had discovered the terrain was too soft to support a 52-story building without tens of millions in extra foundation and design work. In March 2006, the project’s general contractor, a prominent national firm, dropped out.

Meanwhile, the developers still hadn’t found the $200 million in financing the project desperately needed, even though Trump, during his Tampa visit a year earlier, had told a reporter “we have banks fighting over this project.”

The project was facing a financial squeeze. As a result, the developers began to miss some payments to the Trump Organization. In May, marketing executive Cremer had to pester one of the developers, Dagostino, for $64,091 in overdue licensing payments. “I’m hiring you as my ‘collector,’” Trump general counsel Bernie Diamond emailed her, when the money was on its way. “And you didn’t have to break his knee caps.”

“Yeah!” Cremer responded. “And he is even Italian!” (When reached by phone and asked about the Tampa project, Dagostino replied: “I’m not opening that can of worms. I have absolutely no comment. I went through enough agony through all this.”)

One potential lender after another dropped out. A Chicago bank that had loaned to another Trump-branded project demurred because the developers hadn’t sold enough condos to meet the bank’s financing standards. The Trump Organization monitored the situation closely. At one point in 2006, Diamond advised Donald Jr., Ivanka and Cremer that Deutsche Bank is “the only game in town.” But that didn’t come together either.

In August 2006, Donald Trump began to publicly express anxiety about the project, telling a reporter “this is the only job I have in the world that isn’t going up quickly.” Another sign of his concern: He reversed his previous position that he had an ownership stake and disclosed that, in fact, he merely had a licensing deal. Trump announced he was considering a buyout of the Tampa developers’ interest to rescue the situation. “I could build that [tower] out of my back pocket,” he boasted to the Tampa Tribune. “This isn’t a big job for me.” He also insisted he could easily find financing. “Banks love me,” he said.

After reading that article, Cremer emailed Andrew Weiss, the Trump Organization’s longtime executive vice president for development and construction: “Bernie and I need to discuss our Tampa project with you. DJT wants to buy out the job from the developers. Long story, but we need to do our due diligence…”

“Why do I get the feeling that nothing good will come of this?” Weiss replied.

Trump’s deputies began gathering cost data on the project. But by late August 2006, there was another option. The developers had approached the Related Group, a prominent Miami developer that had built other Trump-branded Florida condo towers, about taking over the Tampa project.

Eric Fordin, the Related executive evaluating the situation, had gone to college with Dagostino of SimDag. He quickly concluded they were in far over their heads. “Frank had no business doing a 50-story tower on a property with terrible soils,” Fordin testified later in a deposition for a lawsuit brought by angry condo buyers. “My first trip to Tampa, I was there for five minutes and told him he was never going to finish the project; he was never going to deliver the project on time.”

By the fall of 2006, estimated costs were soaring toward $300 million. Two general contractors had dropped out. Liens were being filed for millions in unpaid bills. And more than 40 percent of the condos remained unsold, after dozens of buyers had canceled their reservations and pulled out. The projected completion date had slipped into 2009.

Related proposed tough terms to rescue the venture, including a provision that would eliminate the Trump Organization share of the profits and replace it with a fee for each condo unit sold.

Donald Trump Jr., 28 at the time, was furious.

“I hate related,” he wrote a Trump Organization colleague on Sept. 9, 2006. “this is b/s. I do not think we could have been more clear with these assholes less than 3 weeks ago and they are already back to the flat structure nonsense and connot consider giving trump a piece of the backend,” he vented to in-house attorney Diamond. “They must think we are the dumbest people on the fucking block.”

On Sept. 11, Donald Jr. emailed his brother Eric, his sister Ivanka and seven other company executives, calling for an “all hands on meeting” to decide what to do. “We have some very important decisions to make regarding the outcome of this job,” he wrote. Taking over the project was one option. As a second, Donald Jr. wrote, “we have to assess the related offer which I hate, but it would be better than a failure if the numbers do not make sense for us.”

There were larger considerations to weigh, Donald Jr. noted. “I cannot stress enough the importance of not having any failures this early in the process of building up the licencing model,” which had emerged as the Trump Organization’s strategy.

Bad publicity was another. Forbes magazine was preparing a cover story on “The Real Apprentices” — how Trump’s children were faring as his prospective business successors. A failed deal on their watch would damage the narrative.

Wrote Donald Jr.: “With the Forbes piece underway and prob on stands in the next few weeks we will be under scrutiny more than ever and this presents us the opportunity to not only salvage a bad press situation but to potentially turn it inot a great thing for tyhe model if it makes sense. I.e. Trump saves the day…we will however have to do some real number crunching to see if it is in fact viable.”

On Oct. 2, Diamond emailed Ivanka that “either we swallow hard on the License Fee or take over the job, the latter being the least desired alternative.”

Ivanka, who had just turned 25, had another idea. She began talking up the Tampa deal to Wood Partners, a Georgia development firm she was working with on a massive planned “Trump Towers” project in downtown Atlanta. (That development never became a reality.)

On Nov. 10, 2006, Ivanka emailed her brothers and other Trump executives that partners from the Atlanta firm were coming to New York. “They want to discuss taking over the Tampa job,” she advised. “We have to give them a strong sell about how terrific this job is and that the only reason it is failing is due to the inexperience of the developers.” She did not mention that the Trump Organization had chosen to work with these inexperienced developers.

But this pitch would go nowhere, and by early 2007, the Tampa developers had begun getting letters from lawyers representing condo buyers, threatening to sue unless they were released from their contracts and given their deposits back. The developers responded by writing purchasers — “Dear Trump Tower Unit Buyer” — offering excuses and inducements (such as paying interest on their deposits) to try to keep everyone on board. Buyers started filing suits.

Still, there were moments of levity between the developers and the Trump Organization even as the pressure mounted. In April 2007, Simon, the developer and former wrestler, emailed Trump Organization lawyer Diamond after a call with a potential investor whom they were jointly wooing. “I told him to get off his ass soon and spend some warm and fuzzy time with you on the phone,” Simon wrote. “He promised he would, but we’ll see….I may eventually have to reenact my own version of SmackDown here in Tampa. You want to be my tag team partner? Have you ever donned tights?”

Despite Donald Trump’s public talk, his organization made no move to invest in the troubled project bearing his name. Its efforts to help SimDag find a lender had gone nowhere.

To Donald Jr., dealing with Related now seemed a palatable option. He emailed his siblings and other company executives: “we need to get this signed soon the longer it hangs out there with the press of buyers trying to pull out the less likely [Related] will sign on.” Ivanka followed up with an email on April 16 to Related’s CEO: “Is there someone on your team that I should contact directly to try to wrap up a deal?”

That same day, Trump sent a notice to the Tampa developers, advising them that they were $903,637 behind in their licensing payments, and in default of the licensing agreement for failing to sell at least 70 percent of the condo units within 30 months and start construction within 18 months. Trump threatened to yank their rights to use his name on the building.

With the broader real estate market also deteriorating, Related executive Fordin grew more skeptical. In a May 7 memo, he wrote that Trump Tampa “has evolved from a ‘joint development’ opportunity into a ‘distressed play’ opportunity.”

By May 25, the Tampa developers had fallen more than $1 million behind on their licensing payments. That day, Trump filed suit in federal court against people he had previously described as “the finest partners you can imagine.” He also pulled his name from the project. With the lawsuit, he included a copy of his licensing agreement, including a confidentiality clause barring anyone — “under any circumstances” — from even revealing the deal’s existence. (The suit was later settled on confidential terms.) This was the first many Tampa buyers learned that Trump had no equity in the project, but had merely sold use of his name.

Prospects for salvaging the project were fading fast. In late May, a SimDag executive had emailed Related’s Fordin, raising the prospect of selling the 1.5-acre site for “roughly $25MM.”

“You guys cannot be serious,” Fordin replied. “Nobody in their right minds are going to give you anything close to that number.” Fordin listed seven reasons, including litigation, the soil problems, an “all fucked up” building design, and “you have lost the Trump name.”

In the months that followed, a member of the Tampa group periodically called or emailed the Trump Organization, informing the company of yet another new hope to attract financing — and then get Trump “back into the deal.”

“Any news re the supposed financing etc.???” Donald Jr. asked his colleagues in early August.

“None,” Diamond replied.

Desperate, SimDag paid a $150,000 commitment fee — presumably for a loan of up to $200 million — to a purported “faith-based” lender named Providence Funding, run by Byron Levon Canada, who masqueraded as a priest and had served time in federal prison for fraud. The $200 million never materialized. (SimDag later sued Canada, who denied wrongdoing in his legal pleadings; the case was settled.)

Finally, in June 2008, the Trump Tampa Tower developers put the project into bankruptcy. Called for comment at the time, Donald Trump told a local reporter that he wanted to step in to save the project, but insisted his licensing agreement made that impossible. (That impediment was never mentioned in the internal Trump Organization documents.) The project’s failure, Trump declared, was “a real shame.”

But apparently those sympathies didn’t extend to the Tampa developers. In total, they had paid approximately $1.8 million in licensing fees to Trump, court records and documents show. Still, in 2009, Trump filed a new suit against the developers to collect unpaid settlements of $13,448.35 from each, citing the personal guarantees they had signed.

The Riverside property was foreclosed on in 2009, then sold in 2015 for $12.1 million to a local developer, who announced his own plans to build “an iconic” 50-story tower — “the best building ever built in the Tampa market.”

Today the site remains vacant, a weedy, fenced-in lot along the Hillsborough River.

Additional reporting by Katherine Sullivan.

Robert Reich Has a Message for America’s Youth This November

You are the largest, most diverse and progressive group of potential voters in American history, comprising fully 30 percent of the voting age population.

On Nov. 6, you have the power to alter the course of American politics—flipping Congress, changing the leadership of states and cities, making lawmakers act and look more like the people who are literally the nation’s future.

But you need to vote. In the last midterm election, in 2014, only 16 percent of eligible voters from the ages of 18 to 29 even bothered.

Now, I understand. I was young once. You have a lot on your minds—starting jobs, careers and families. Also, unlike your grandparents—some of whom were involved in civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, the anti-Vietnam War movement—you may not remember a time when political action changed America for the better.

You don’t even recall when American democracy worked well. Instead, during your lifetime you’ve watched big money take over Washington and state capitals. This may explain why only about 30 percent of you born in the 1980s think it “essential” to live in a democracy.

But the issues up for grabs this coming Nov. 6 are not ideological abstractions. They’re causes in which you have direct personal stakes.

Take, for example, gun violence—which some of you have experienced first-hand and have taken active roles trying to stop.

Or immigrant’s rights. Over 20 percent of you are Latino, and a growing percentage of you are from families that emigrated from Asia. Many of you have directly experienced the consequences of Trump’s policies.

A woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby, and gay’s or lesbian’s rights to marry—they’re also issues you’re deeply committed to. They’ll be front and center if the Supreme Court, as expected, puts them back into the hands of Congress and state legislatures.

You’re also concerned about student debt, access to college and opportunities to get ahead unimpeded by racial bigotry or sexual harassment.

And you’re worried about the environment. You know climate change will hit you hardest since you will be on the planet longer than older voters.

You’ve also seen that your votes count. You saw Hillary Clinton lose by a relative handful of votes in places like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. You’re aware of the slim but increasingly real possibility of Democrats taking back the Senate.

As doubtful as you are about politics or the differences between the two parties, you also know that Donald Trump and his Republican enablers want to take the nation backward to an old, white, privileged, isolated America. You don’t.

In my 35 years of teaching college students, I’ve not encountered a generation as dedicated to making the nation better as yours.

So my betting is on you, this Nov. 6. Please register and vote.

Trump’s Plan to Abandon Nuclear Arms Pact Rattles Experts

Concerns are mounting after President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that he will withdraw from a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty with Russia following reports that National Security Adviser John Bolton had been pushing the plan behind closed doors despite warnings from experts that ditching the agreement “would be reckless and stupid.”

The Guardian had reported Friday that Bolton and an ally in the White House have been working to convince members of the administration to support the United States withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) on the grounds that Russia is violating it. Nuclear arms control experts and others rapidly responded with alarm. Many agreed that Russia’s alleged violation “merits a strong response” but noted a withdrawal could alienate European allies and raise the chances of armed conflict.

The president’s comments on Saturday spurred more alarm, with Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association calling the looming withdrawal “an epic mistake.”

An epic mistake. U.S. withdrawal from #INF removes all constraints on RF deployment illegal 9M729 missile, increasing risk to Europe; shifts blame from Russia to Trump; opens door to arms race. “Trump says US will pull out of intermediate range nuke pact” https://t.co/Y2LE8Hwkfj pic.twitter.com/Wq7VYQTCcs

— Daryl G Kimball (@DarylGKimball) October 20, 2018

Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, agreed. “This is a colossal mistake,” he told the Guardian. “I doubt very much that the U.S. will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.”

“By declaring he will leave the INF Treaty, President Trump has shown himself to be a demolition man who has no ability to build real security,” responded Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “Instead, by blowing up nuclear treaties he is taking the U.S. down a trillion dollar road to a new nuclear arms race.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald tied the update to broader narratives about the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia, and in particular President Vladimir Putin:

This is a major (and dangerous) provocation toward Russia by Trump that – like his lethal arms to Ukraine, the bombing of Assad’s forces, & sanctions/expulsions – should cause anyone who peddled the “Putin-controls-Trump-with- kompromat” conspiracy tripe to apologize in shame: https://t.co/bJJOrSJ6M3

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 21, 2018

Trump revealed his withdrawal plans to reporters after campaign event in Nevada on Saturday. “Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years. I don’t know why President [Barack] Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out,” he said. “And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [while] we’re not allowed to.”

While claiming he would be receptive if both Russia and China concluded, “‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,” under current circumstances, Trump appears hellbent on making more weapons. “If Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” he said. “So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with our military.”

“We are going to terminate the agreement and we are going to develop the weapons. If we get smart and if others get smart, and say ‘Let’s not develop these horrible nuclear weapons,’ I would be extremely happy with that,” he added. “But as long as somebody’s violating that agreement then we’re not going to be the only ones to adhere to it.”

The signing of the INF treaty during the nuclear arms race of the Cold War, as CNN pointed out, had “marked a watershed agreement.” It required both Russia and the United States to eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles.

The treaty “wasn’t designed to solve all of our problems with the Soviet Union,” but was “designed to provide a measure of some strategic stability on the continent of Europe,” explained former State Department spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby, now a CNN military and diplomatic analyst. “I suspect our European allies right now are none too happy about hearing that President Trump intends to pull out of it.”

Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Association outlined in a pair of tweets the impact a withdrawal could have on American foreign relations:

Withdrawal wld make the problem far worse by:

-Removing all constraints on Russia’s production and fielding of the illegal 9M729 missile

-Dividing NATO

-Allowing Russia to blame US for killing the treaty

-Undermining US leverage to attempt to bring Russia back into compliance

— Kingston Reif (@KingstonAReif) October 20, 2018

And thanks to the president’s warmonger of a national security adviser, the INF treaty isn’t the only arms control agreement with Russia currently under threat of termination. As the Guardian reported:

Bolton and the top arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison, are also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the 2010 New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia, is due to expire in 2021.

“This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute. “If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972.”

Responding to the developments in a series of tweets, Alexandra Bell, a former senior arms control official at the State Department who is now at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said: “Trump says that he is abandoning the INF treaty, basically confirms a renewed arms race, and absolves himself from any responsibility to lead efforts to reduce nuclear tensions around the globe.”

“This administration has damaged, perhaps irreparably, an int’l order that has served U.S. interests for decades, turned a blind eye to catastrophic climate change, corroded our govt, [and] poisoned our national discourse,” Bell added. “Now it will ask you to fund a nuclear arms race. #VoteThemOut“

The Latest Explosive Revelations in the Jamal Khashoggi Case

ANKARA, Turkey — A man appearing to wear Jamal Khashoggi’s clothes left the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul following his killing there, according to a surveillance video, while a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage made four calls to the royal’s office around the same time, reports said Monday.

The reports by CNN and a pro-government Turkish newspaper came just a day before Prince Mohammed’s high-profile investment summit is to begin in Riyadh and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised that details of Khashoggi’s killing “will be revealed in all its nakedness.”

That yet again adds to the pressure Saudi Arabia faces over the slaying of the Washington Post columnist. The kingdom’s claim on Saturday that Khashoggi died in a “fistfight” met international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

CNN aired surveillance footage on Monday showing the man in Khashoggi’s dress shirt, suit jacket and pants. It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a “body double” and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The man is seen in the footage walking out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then taking a taxi to Istanbul’s famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public bathroom, changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Khashoggi’s clothes.

In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said that he had left the consulate, implying premeditation on the part of the Saudi team.

“After Turkish authorities and the media were allowed to inspect the consulate building in its entirety, the accusations changed to the outrageous claim that he was murdered, in the consulate, during business hours, and with dozens of staff and visitors in the building,” Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote on Oct. 8. “I don’t know who is behind these claims, or their intentions, nor do I care frankly.”

A separate report by newspaper Yeni Safak said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed’s entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed’s office. It said another call went to the United States.

Yeni Safak cited no source for the information. However, pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Khashoggi’s killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces. Yeni Safak reported last week that Saudi officials cut off Khashoggi’s fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate as his fiancée waited outside.

Officials in Saudi Arabia have not answered repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press in recent days, including on Monday. Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutreb’s presence in Istanbul — nor that a forensics and autopsy expert was also on hand for Khashoggi’s arrival at the consulate.

Last week, a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage showed Mutreb at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi’s arrival. Mutreb’s name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Khashoggi’s son, Salah, early on Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggi’s death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told the AP that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his father’s criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion. The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

Five Turkish employees of the consulate also gave testimonies to prosecutors on Monday, Turkish media reported. Istanbul’s chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony. Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday told Fox News that Khashoggi’s killing was “a rogue operation” and that “we don’t know where the body is.”

“The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority,” he said. “There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government.”

However, leading Republicans and Democrats in Congress are saying Saudi Arabia should face punishment over Khashoggi’s killing. President Donald Trump also had talked about possible punishment but said he didn’t want to halt proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia because, he maintained, it would harm U.S. manufacturers.

Britain, Germany and France issued a joint statement condemning the killing of Khashoggi, saying there is an “urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened.”

In a statement Sunday, the governments said attacks on journalists are unacceptable and “of utmost concern to our three nations.” They said the “hypotheses” proposed so far in the Saudi investigation need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that she supports a freeze on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined that point Monday, calling for a joint European position as Germany “won’t at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened.”

Dennis Rodman Says He Created ‘North Korea Thing’; Also, Trump Isn’t Racist (Video)

Politicon 2018 was, per usual, an over-the-top experience, but the mood and the crowd were conspicuously more Trump-friendly than in previous years. A certain type of red baseball cap was worn proudly, and full-throated “MAGA!” eruptions were let loose, by a higher concentration of people in that section of downtown L.A. than could be found on any other square block within a 20-mile radius.

Organizers of the politics-meets-showbiz summit know how to lure big-ticket names from the speaker’s circuit to their event. Although any number of panels just like the ones staged Saturday around the Los Angeles Convention Center were no doubt also happening all day on cable news, a sizable audience of political junkies showed up as well, hoping to catch the live version of their favorite political acts.

If the below tweet is any indication of what conference-goers were in for, it apparently wasn’t much of a deterrent—nor was the steep $70 ticket price.

Headed to #Politicon2018 today? Just follow the balloon!

U.S. Facilitates Saudi War Crimes in Yemen

The alleged torture, dismemberment and killing of Saudi citizen and US permanent resident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul has triggered justifiable outrage throughout the United States and around the world. But amid the outcry over Khashoggi’s death, many media and public figures still fail to acknowledge the war crimes Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen with US assistance.

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had written critically about the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Post reported that Mohammed had recently attempted to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia in an operation resembling an extrajudicial “rendition,” where a person is forcibly removed from one country and taken to another for interrogation. Bloomberg reported that the United States knew the Saudis planned to seize Khashoggi because US intelligence services had intercepted communications between Saudi officials discussing the plan. According to Turkish sources, participants in Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment were Saudi operatives.

Six days after Khashoggi’s disappearance, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman made the astounding claim, “If Jamal has been abducted and murdered by agents of the Saudi government … [i]t would be an unfathomable violation of norms of human decency, worse not in numbers but in principle than even the Yemen war.”

Friedman’s attempt to minimize the enormity of the carnage, including over 6,000 civilian casualties and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, resulting from three years of war in Yemen is not uncommon. Vicki Divoll, former CIA attorney and instructor at the US Naval Academy, told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer in 2009, “People are a lot more comfortable with a Predator [drone] strike that kills many people than with a throat-slitting that kills one.”

In fact, Saudi Arabia is committing war crimes in Yemen and the US government is aiding and abetting them.

Saudi-US War Crimes Committed in Yemen

The Saudi-led coalition is bombing Yemen in order to defeat the Houthi rebels who have been resisting government repression. This war is the culmination of a long-standing grievance the Houthis have had with the state, which was weakened during the Arab spring. Yemen is strategically located on a narrow waterway that links the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea.

In August, the coalition dropped a 500-pound, laser-guided MK 82 bomb on a bus at a market in Dahyan, killing 51 people, including 40 children. The bomb was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, a leading US defense contractor. Provision of that bomb was part of a US-Saudi arms deal last year.

The August bombing conducted with US-manufactured weapons was not an isolated incident. In 2016, the coalition used a similar bomb to kill 155 people at a funeral in Sana’a.

As recently as October 13, a Saudi-led airstrike killed at least 19 people and injured 30 when it hit a convoy of buses carrying civilians escaping an attack on Hodeidah. The coalition has mounted more than 50 airstrikes on civilian vehicles in 2018 alone.

Targeting civilians is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

By furnishing a bomb with knowledge it would likely be used to commit a war crime, US leaders could be tried for aiding and abetting a war crime under customary international law. They supplied the bomb used in the August 2018 bus attack, knowing a similar one was used in the 2016 funeral bombing.

Trump Administration Lies to Congress About Attempts to Minimize Civilian Casualties

On September 12, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified to Congress “that the governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure resulting from military operations of these governments [in Yemen].”

However, as New York University Professor Mohamad Bazzi noted in The Nation, “the administration’s assurances contradicted virtually every other independent review of the war, including the recent report by a group of UN experts and several Human Rights Watch investigations that found the Saudi coalition culpable of war crimes.”

On August 28, the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, documented the likely commission of war crimes by parties to the war in Yemen. The group of experts concluded that coalition airstrikes have caused most of the direct civilian casualties, hitting residential areas, weddings, funerals, markets, detention facilities, medical facilities and civilian boats.

The Trump administration is lying to Congress about the coalition’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties. The Wall Street Journal quoted a classified memo revealing that Pompeo certified Saudi-Emeriti compliance with the minimization requirement, notwithstanding opposition by several military and regional experts at the US State Department, “due to a lack of progress on mitigating civilian casualties.”

A new law requires that the administration certify to Congress every six months that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are doing enough to minimize civilian casualties or the US will cease refueling operations in Yemen. Pompeo’s certification was motivated by a desire to protect a forthcoming $2 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to the classified memo.

US leaders are mindful of their potential liability for aiding and abetting Saudi-UAE war crimes in Yemen, according to documents acquired by Reuters pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Pushback From Congress on US Assistance to Saudi Arabia

In March, a bipartisan resolution that would have ended US support, including refueling and targeting assistance, for Saudi military actions in Yemen, was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 55-44. A similar resolution was voted down in the House of Representatives. The resolutions invoked the War Powers Resolution, which allows the president to introduce US Armed Forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities only after Congress has declared war, or in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces,” or when there is “specific statutory authorization,” such as an Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), co-sponsor of the Senate bill, stated, “Some will argue on the floor today that we’re really not engaged in hostilities, we’re not exchanging fire. Please tell that to the people of Yemen, whose homes and lives are being destroyed by weapons marked ‘Made in the U.S.A.,’ dropped by planes being refueled by the U.S. military on targets chosen with US assistance.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is doing a two-step to avoid blaming Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi’s death.

But Congress is pushing back.

On October 10, a bipartisan group of 22 senators sent a letter to Trump, triggering the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which requires the president “to determine whether a foreign person is responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture, or other gross violation of internationally recognized human rights against an individual exercising freedom of expression, and report to the Committee within 120 days with a determination and a decision on the imposition of sanctions on that foreign person or persons.”

The letter states that Khashoggi “could be a victim of a gross violation of internationally recognized human rights, which includes ‘torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges and trial, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, and other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person.’”

It calls on Trump to impose sanctions on “any foreign person responsible for such a violation related to Mr. Khashoggi,” including “the highest ranking officials of the Government of Saudi Arabia.”

The timing of this scandal is tricky for congressional Republicans. Several GOP Congress members are demanding an aggressive US response if Saudi Arabia is responsible for Khashoggi’s killing. But with the November 6 midterm elections less than three weeks away, many could face a backlash with voters if they distance themselves from Trump.

Trans Rights Activists Blast Trump’s Latest ‘Reckless Attack’

Sparking immediate outrage among LGBTQ Americans and allies on Sunday, the New York Times reported on a memo revealing that “the Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.”

In a move that “would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves—surgically or otherwise—as a gender other than the one they were born into,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is currently considering a legal definition that “would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with,” according to the Times.

The memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since the spring, claims that “sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” and notes that under the proposed definition, “the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

Advocates for LGBTQ rights, while infuriated by the proposal, were quick to point to the administration’s lengthy record of attacks on trans individuals the and ongoing legal battles to challenge such attacks.

“Not only is this insulting, inhumane, and unacceptable, but it also flies in the face of THE LAW,” Lambda Legal, a civil rights group that focuses on the LGBTQ community, responded in a series of tweets. “This decision by HHS to attempt to erase transgender people disregards and flouts the overwhelming case law that protects transgender people under federal law, as well as the vast consensus of medical authority.”

“This is clearly another ideologically-driven attempt by the Trump/Pence administration to marginalize transgender people and force them into the shadows,” the group added. “This will not stand because we will not let it stand.”

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), also denounced steps by the administration to deny trans Americans full recognition of their identities.

“This proposal is an attempt to put heartless restraints on the lives of two million people, effectively abandoning our right to equal access to healthcare, to housing, to education, or to fair treatment under the law,” she warned. “This administration is willing to disregard the established medical and legal view of our rights and ourselves to solidify an archaic, dogmatic, and frightening view of the world.”

Planned Parenthood Action declared, “These inhumane, cruel, and discriminatory policies are dangerous and do not represent the needs of our diverse communities.”

This is horrifying. These inhumane, cruel, and discriminatory policies are dangerous and do not represent the needs of our diverse communities. https://t.co/qQaVwnGamI

— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) October 21, 2018

“The cruelty and bigotry of this administration truly has no limit,” observed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The cruelty and bigotry of this administration truly has no limit. We should be doing everything we can to protect our transgender brothers and sisters. https://t.co/pD4dZ6tULc

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 21, 2018

Danica Roem—who, last November, became Virginia’s first openly transgender state House member by defeating the anti-trans Republican incumbent—noted: “Singling out and stigmatizing your transgender constituents isn’t just the antithesis of constituent service; it’s dangerous and gets us killed.”

Singling out and stigmatizing your transgender constituents isn’t just the antithesis of constituent service; it’s dangerous and gets us killed.
I shouldn’t have to have more faith in @LambdaLegal than the POTUS to prevent this horror show but here we are.https://t.co/m6JRdeRhl7

— Danica Roem (@pwcdanica) October 21, 2018

Since Trump took office, hate-inspired murders of LGBTQ Americans have skyrocketed as his administration has taken steps to strip away their rights—often in the name of defending “religious freedom.” Such steps have included the Education Department’s refusal to protect trans students; the Justice Department’s efforts to enable discrimination; the State Department’s denial of visas to diplomats’ same-sex partners; and Trump’s moves to ban trans individuals from serving in the military and dismiss his entire advisory council for HIV/AIDS.

From hate-fueled murders to the Trump administration’s discriminatory policies, trans Americans often have been specifically targeted. As Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, told the Times, “At every step where the administration has had the choice, they’ve opted to turn their back on transgender people.”

While some critics characterized the Times report as “a terrifying wake-up call,” Evan Greer of Fight for the Future said, “Exactly zero trans people are surprised by the Trump administration’s latest attack.”

Exactly zero trans people are surprised by the Trump administration's latest attack. Let's be perfectly clear: if this policy goes into effect, people will die. And the path was paved not by fundamentalists, but by ivory tower academics who decided our existence was up for debate

— Evan Greer (@evan_greer) October 21, 2018

“No one should have to suffer just to be true to themselves,” Keisling charged Sunday. “And yet transgender people are still often forced from their homes, fired from their jobs, harassed at their schools, and denied the most basic level of dignity by a broken system.”

Addressing the transgender community directly, she said: “I know you are frightened. I know you are horrified to see your existence treated in such an inhumane and flippant manner. What this administration is trying to do is an abomination, a reckless attack on your life and mine.”

“Remember that there is an entire human rights community that not only stands with us but will always fight back—and fight hard,” she concluded. “Thousands of us have devoted our lives to protecting you and your families, and our ability to do so is nothing short of a privilege. And we will not lay down now.”