Chris Hedges's Blog, page 450

Homeless America

PORTLAND, Ore.—It is 8 a.m. I am in the small offices of Street Roots, a weekly newspaper that prints 10,000 copies per edition. Those who sell the newspaper on the streets—all of them victims of extreme poverty and half of them homeless—have gathered before heading out with their bundles to spend hours in the cold and rain.

“There is foot care on Mondays starting at 8 a.m. with the nurses,” Cole Merkel, the director of the vendor program, shouts above the chatter. “If you need to get your feet taken care of, come in for the nurses’ foot care. Just a really quick shout-out and thank you to Leo and Nettie Johnson, who called up to City Hall this week to testify about the criminalization of homelessness to City Council and the mayor. Super awesome.”

The men and women, most middle-aged or elderly, sit on folding chairs that hug the walls. They are wrapped in layers of worn and tattered clothing. Some cradle small dogs. Others cup their hands around disposable coffee cups and take small sips. The weekly newspaper was founded in 1998. It focuses on issues surrounding social and environmental justice as well as homelessness. It also reprints poems and artwork by the 180 vendors, who buy the paper for 25 cents a copy and sell it for a dollar.

On the walls there are poignant reminders of the lives these people lead, including posters of missing men and women, notices about where to find free food or clothing, and scattered one-page obituaries of those who died recently, many discovered in parks or on sidewalks. The average age at death for a man is 51 and for a woman 43. Nearly half succumb to alcohol or drugs, 28 percent are hit by vehicles and 9 percent commit suicide. Life expectancy plummets once you become homeless. From 50 to 80 homeless people die on the streets of Portland every year, and many more in its hospitals.

“Monica needs a kidney,” reads one handwritten sign.

“Missing: Robert Gary Maricelli, not seen since Feb. 10, 11:00 pm,” reads another. Maricelli, 22, was last sighted near the Steel Bridge in Portland.

These men and women, and increasingly children, are the collateral damage of the corporate state, their dignity and lives destroyed by the massive transference of wealth upward, deindustrialization and the slashing of federal investment in affordable housing begun during the Reagan administration. The lack of stable jobs that pay a living wage in the gig and temp economy, the collapse of mental health and medical services for the poor, and gentrification are turning America into a living hell for hundreds of thousands of its citizens. And this is just the start.

Though federal estimates put the nation’s homeless number at 554,000, most cities—including Portland, which officially has about 4,000 people without shelter—estimate the homeless, notoriously hard to count, to be at least three times higher. Portland schools, like most public schools throughout the country, are seeing growing homelessness among their students—1,522 children in the Beaverton School District, or 4 percent of the total enrollment, and 1,509 in the Portland Public Schools, or 3 percent of total enrollment. The problem extends to many of Oregon’s smallest towns. In Butte Falls (population 429 in 2010) in Jackson County, there are 56 homeless students, or 30 percent of the district’s total enrollment. Many homeless students, because they often drift from one temporary space to another, never appear in the official statistics.

As we barrel toward another economic collapse, the suffering endured by those on the streets will become ever more familiar, especially with the corporate state intent on further reducing or eliminating social services in the name of austerity. Nothing will halt the downward spiral other than sustained civil disobedience. The two ruling political parties are wedded to an economic system that serves the corporate rich and punishes and criminalizes the poor and the working poor. Over half the country is probably only a few paychecks away from being on the streets.

This gritty section of Portland was once known as Nihonmachi or Japantown. The Street Roots newspaper is housed in the former Chitose Laundry. Across the street is the old Oshu Nippo News, the Japanese-language daily newspaper that was raided by the FBI on Dec. 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. It was shut down and its staff arrested. The neighborhood’s Japanese population was rounded up, stripped of all possessions and placed in concentration camps, part of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most from California and the Northwest, who were interned during the war. People who were only one-sixteenth Japanese were arrested. Sixty-two percent of those displaced by the internment order were U.S. citizens. There were no credible reports of them being a security risk. It was a policy grounded in racism.

The Japanese community in Portland never resurrected itself after the war. The past crimes of the state merge, in the eyes of Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots, with the present ones.

“Those families were rendered homeless and incarcerated by order of the federal government,” she says. “Their possessions were reduced to what fit in suitcases. Now, on these same streets, people also carry their bags and their sorrows without a home.”

Charles McPherson, 34, stands looking at the collection of recent obituaries posted on the wall near the front door. He was about 2 when his father died. In his senior year in high school he was taken hostage by an escaped convict and held for 12 hours during a standoff with police. He never went back to school.

“PTSD,” he says of his dropping out of school. “I could not be in crowds.”

He drifted from one short-term job to another. He lived for two years in an RV. He filed countless requests for housing but was turned down. By 2014 he was homeless.

I ask him what he finds hardest about being homeless.

“Not being able to get ahead,” he says. “Just barely keeping from losing everything we’ve got.”

Throughout the day I hear a lot about “losing everything.” Small piles of possessions, along with tents or tarps, precious to the homeless and very hard to procure, are confiscated during police sweeps. The victims find themselves standing in the rain in the middle of the night with nothing. The confiscated possessions are supposed to be stored by two subcontractors, Pacific Patrol Services and Rapid Response Bio Clean, for 30 days, but many on the streets say they never see their belongings again.

Leo Rhodes, 53, a Pima Indian, grew up in poverty on the Gila River Indian reservation south of Phoenix. He joined the Army when he was 19. When he returned from the Army after three years he started abusing drugs and alcohol. He has been homeless, on and off, for 30 years. He has also been one of the most effective advocates for the homeless in Seattle and Portland. He helped found and organize the governance of two tent cities and a rest area in Portland where the homeless can sleep in 12-hour shifts in a safe environment called Right to Dream Too. He keeps notebooks full of his poetry. He divides the world into the “homeless and the non-homeless.”

He hands me one of his poems, published in Street Roots, titled “Being Human?” It reads:

I am the voice you never hear

If I spoke would you listen?

   I am the ugly duckling

Visible in your pretty little world

   I am the criminal when I sleep

   I am the nuisance

Trying to keep dry out of the rain

   I am the homeless person

Looking for dignity and a safe secure place

“The problem is that when you get a job and they find out you are homeless they fire you,” he says. “It does not matter if you are sober and a hard worker. As soon as your co-workers know you are homeless or formerly homeless they put this stigma on you. They think you are a drunk, a druggie, a criminal or mentally ill and can’t be trusted.”

The stress of living on the streets takes a toll on mental health and often pushes those who already have mental health issues over the edge.

“When you’re outside, any little noise, it is a real threat,” says Dan Newth, an Army veteran who says he tried to commit suicide in January 2015 by overdosing on prescription pills. “I’ve been kicked in the head when I was asleep. I’ve woken up to a beating from people I didn’t know. They’re just doing it because they see a homeless person there on the sidewalk. We try to hide when we sleep, get out of the way. I got my tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, and a pillow. It’s critical. When I don’t sleep for two days, I see things that aren’t there. I hear things that nobody said. And they’re negative. My hallucinations become very negative. Anybody who doesn’t sleep for a number of days is going to hallucinate. When you see someone on the street and they’re going off for no reason, they’re not getting enough sleep. They’ve dealt with so much negativity. It can be a look. Saying hello to somebody and you’re ignored. All this stuff adds up. You blame yourself. Subconsciously, you start hating yourself. Even though you are trying to think, you start blaming things in every direction. You will react to people who aren’t necessarily there to hurt you. But you feel everybody is. It’s overwhelming.”

“You jump all these hoops,” he says of the city’s social services. “And then they exclude you and you don’t know why. They don’t let you get into housing. You never know why. You just get frustrated. Portland needs another MSW [master of social work] like they need another panhandler. The money goes to the salaried people. They keep making their money. And they will use up a homeless person’s energy, jumping through the hoops, going to meetings with this person, going to that meeting, all this stuff. We’re exhausted most of the time. At the end, you’re still homeless. In some ways, MSWs are like vampires. I don’t like the way the system is set up. I avoid it. I sleep outside. I sell Street Roots. I meet my needs the best I can.”

Jasmine Rosado, 39, works periodically as a stripper. She is currently in subsidized housing, where she pays $530 a month for a studio apartment. Her only child, a 24-year-old son, Darius, is in the Army in Syria. She has not seen him in over four years. When she mentions his name her eyes well up.

“It’s been very hard on me,” she admits. “I love him a lot. There’s nothing we can do. He’s in God’s hands.”

She studied music and dance at the University of Oregon and plays the violin and cello. Her instruments are in storage.

“The strip club owners are very tight knit,” she said of her employers. “If they have a problem with a girl, they will call around and you won’t get a job anywhere.”

Art Garcia, 71, sits holding his 5-pound dog on his lap.

“Migo,” he says when I ask the dog’s name. “Like Amigo without the A. It’s a Chihuahua. I’ve had Migo for four years. I got him when he was a little over 9 months old from the shelter. My best friend. This guy has really helped me a lot. I have anxiety disorder. Around a lot of people I can’t breathe. He calms me down a lot. He helps a lot. Sometimes he’ll wake me up at night if I have an attack or something. In my sleep, my breathing changes.”

Garcia was raised in an abusive home and later an orphanage. When he graduated from high school in 1966 he joined the Marine Corps and was sent to Vietnam. He was 19. He fought at Da Nang during the Tet Offensive.

“People were dying all around us,” he says. “It was like a movie. Getting blown up. Killed our own man in the bathroom who was hiding in there. We didn’t know who it was. The lieutenant yelled, ‘If you’re an American come out.’ He was scared. He took his chances and hid in there. We just leveled it. Shot. Killed our own man.”

“I was as scared as I’d ever been,” he says of the war. “All these people shooting at you. That’s when I started my drug habit. You didn’t know if you were going to live or die. Heroin. At first, I was taking speed. We worked seven days a week. Got no days off. Couldn’t stay awake. Got some liquid speed, the guy said, ‘Here take this, it will keep you awake.’ It got us all wired to stay awake. But then you couldn’t go to sleep. So, I got heroin to go to sleep. But after you use that you get all strung out.”

He returned from the war a heroin addict with no home. He slipped in and out of homelessness and was often in prison. He worked odd jobs in construction. He has been clean for a decade and is on methadone. He self-published two books. The one about the war is called “Sitting on the Edge.” The one about returning home as an addict is called “Falling Off the Edge.”

“I missed 10 Christmases in a row for going to prison,” he says. “Going for three years, getting out for a month, going back. Being out for a couple of weeks, going back. Selling drugs. Robbing people for drugs. All drug-related. I spent a lot of years in there. I was on parole for a lot of years. I went to fire camp in California. During a fire, we’d make $1 an hour. That was really good.”

In 2012 Garcia received a monetary settlement from a class-action lawsuit stemming from the military’s use of Agent Orange, which damaged his heart and mobility. He gave Street Roots a $10,000 check and used the rest of the money to find a place to live and help out relatives.

Rhodes takes me around the city. He laconically remembers being beaten in parks, forced off street corners and wakened in the middle of the night by police and told to move.

“You want to know what it is like to be homeless?” he asks. “Set your alarm clock to go off every two hours, pick up everything around you and walk for a few blocks to find another place to sleep.”

“We used to sleep on that loading dock,” he says, pointing to a warehouse. “Then the owners started turning on the sprinklers at 3 a.m. We got soaked. We would walk the streets in our wet clothes carrying our wet things.”

Rhodes said that even when homeless people find a place to live inside it is often difficult to sever themselves from the community of other homeless people.

“I have voluntarily gone back out on the street a few times,” he says. “I missed my friends, the good times, the bad times. You feel guilty for leaving them behind. And I am a homeless advocate. These are my people.”

He is carrying a child’s umbrella with a wooden handle shaped like a duck’s head. In 2009 he was in the rain trying to sell Street Roots outside a Panera Bread restaurant when a passerby handed it to him. He calls it Ducky.

“It’s like my security blanket,” he says. “Ducky has been everywhere with me, in the heat, the rain, the freezing cold. He’s been with me when the rent-a-cops threw us out of doorways where we were sleeping. I say to Ducky, ‘Don’t worry, one day we will have a place. One day we’ll be inside.’ When you are homeless, when you are abandoned, you need something like Ducky. It is why you will see homeless people with dolls or pets. And it’s why they talk to them. It helps us deal with the negativity, all those in society who shun us.”

Rhodes, affable and articulate, regales me with tales of life on the street, the repeated and exhausting efforts to create small communities and the sudden “sweeps” by the police that shatter them.

“I was in a tent city, it was our second move,” he says. “It was right next to a freeway. Traffic was always going by. People honking their horn even at nighttime. Diesels going by. It took us literally three days to acclimate ourselves to that loud noise. You know who was sleeping there because they all had big puffy eyes. Couldn’t sleep because of the noise. But after three days we started sleeping really well. The next place we went to, it was quiet. The only noise there was just a rooster or crow. Every two hours. When we went to the first place, people said, ‘Man, I can’t sleep here, it’s too noisy.’ Then they settle down. At the next place they said, ‘Man, I can’t sleep here, it’s too quiet. I gotta have some noise!’ ”

He laughs.

In his poem “Excuse Me if I Don’t Cry” he writes:

Excuse me if I don’t cry

I’m putting on my game face

The world is big

And they don’t understand

So, I will fight till the world understands

Or till I’m too tired to fight

   Until then

Excuse me if I don’t cry

I’m putting on my game face

   Rest in Peace

My brothers and sisters

U.N. Panel Warns on Climate Change: It’s Life or Death

WASHINGTON — Preventing an extra single degree of heat could make a life-or-death difference in the next few decades for multitudes of people and ecosystems on this fast-warming planet, an international panel of scientists reported Sunday. But they provide little hope the world will rise to the challenge.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its gloomy report at a meeting in Incheon, South Korea.

In the 728-page document, the U.N. organization detailed how Earth’s weather, health and ecosystems would be in better shape if the world’s leaders could somehow limit future human-caused warming to just 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (a half degree Celsius) from now, instead of the globally agreed-upon goal of 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C). Among other things:

— Half as many people would suffer from lack of water.

— There would be fewer deaths and illnesses from heat, smog and infectious diseases.

— Seas would rise nearly 4 inches (0.1 meters) less.

— Half as many animals with back bones and plants would lose the majority of their habitats.

— There would be substantially fewer heat waves, downpours and droughts.

— The West Antarctic ice sheet might not kick into irreversible melting.

— And it just may be enough to save most of the world’s coral reefs from dying.

“For some people this is a life-or-death situation without a doubt,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, a lead author on the report.

Limiting warming to 0.9 degrees from now means the world can keep “a semblance” of the ecosystems we have. Adding another 0.9 degrees on top of that — the looser global goal — essentially means a different and more challenging Earth for people and species, said another of the report’s lead authors, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia.

But meeting the more ambitious goal of slightly less warming would require immediate, draconian cuts in emissions of heat-trapping gases and dramatic changes in the energy field. While the U.N. panel says technically that’s possible, it saw little chance of the needed adjustments happening.

In 2010, international negotiators adopted a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) since pre-industrial times. It’s called the 2-degree goal. In 2015, when the nations of the world agreed to the historic Paris climate agreement, they set dual goals: 2 degrees C and a more demanding target of 1.5 degrees C from pre-industrial times. The 1.5 was at the urging of vulnerable countries that called 2 degrees a death sentence.

The world has already warmed 1 degree C since pre-industrial times, so the talk is really about the difference of another half-degree C or 0.9 degrees F from now.

“There is no definitive way to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 above pre-industrial levels,” the U.N.-requested report said. More than 90 scientists wrote the report, which is based on more than 6,000 peer reviews.

“Global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate,” the report states.

Deep in the report, scientists say less than 2 percent of 529 of their calculated possible future scenarios kept warming below the 1.5 goal without the temperature going above that and somehow coming back down in the future.

The pledges nations made in the Paris agreement in 2015 are “clearly insufficient to limit warming to 1.5 in any way,” one of the study’s lead authors, Joerj Roeglj of the Imperial College in London, said.

“I just don’t see the possibility of doing the one and a half” and even 2 degrees looks unlikely, said Appalachian State University environmental scientist Gregg Marland, who isn’t part of the U.N. panel but has tracked global emissions for decades for the U.S. Energy Department. He likened the report to an academic exercise wondering what would happen if a frog had wings.

Yet report authors said they remain optimistic.

Limiting warming to the lower goal is “not impossible but will require unprecedented changes,” U.N. panel chief Hoesung Lee said in a news conference in which scientists repeatedly declined to spell out just how feasible that goal is. They said it is up to governments to decide whether those unprecedented changes are acted upon.

“We have a monumental task in front of us, but it is not impossible,” Mahowald said earlier. “This is our chance to decide what the world is going to look like.”

To limit warming to the lower temperature goal, the world needs “rapid and far-reaching” changes in energy systems, land use, city and industrial design, transportation and building use, the report said. Annual carbon dioxide pollution levels that are still rising now would have to drop by about half by 2030 and then be near zero by 2050. Emissions of other greenhouse gases, such as methane, also will have to drop. Switching away rapidly from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas to do this could be more expensive than the less ambitious goal, but it would clean the air of other pollutants. And that would have the side benefit of avoiding more than 100 million premature deaths through this century, the report said.

“Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth are projected to increase with global warming” the report said, adding that the world’s poor are more likely to get hit hardest.

Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said extreme weather, especially heat waves, will be deadlier if the lower goal is passed.

Meeting the tougher-to-reach goal “could result in around 420 million fewer people being frequently exposed to extreme heat waves, and about 65 million fewer people being exposed to exceptional heat waves,” the report said. The deadly heat waves that hit India and Pakistan in 2015 will become practically yearly events if the world reaches the hotter of the two goals, the report said.

Coral and other ecosystems are also at risk. The report said warmer water coral reefs “will largely disappear.”

The outcome will determine whether “my grandchildren would get to see beautiful coral reefs,” Princeton’s Oppenheimer said.

For scientists there is a bit of “wishful thinking” that the report will spur governments and people to act quickly and strongly, one of the panel’s leaders, German biologist Hans-Otto Portner, said. “If action is not taken it will take the planet into an unprecedented climate future.”

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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Feds Investigating Limousine Crash That Killed 20

SCHOHARIE, N.Y. — A limousine carrying four sisters, other relatives and friends to a birthday celebration blew through a stop sign and slammed into a parked SUV outside a store in upstate New York, killing all 18 people in the limo and two pedestrians, officials and victims’ relatives said Sunday.

The weekend crash was characterized by authorities as the deadliest U.S. transportation accident in nearly a decade. The crash turned a relaxed Saturday afternoon to horror at a rural spot popular with tourists viewing the region’s fall foliage. Relatives said the limousine was carrying the sisters and their friends to a 30th birthday celebration for the youngest.

“They were wonderful girls,” said their aunt, Barbara Douglas, speaking with reporters Sunday. “They’d do anything for you and they were very close to each other and they loved their family.”

Douglas said three of the sisters were with their husbands, and she identified them as Amy and Axel Steenburg, Abigail and Adam Jackson, Mary and Rob Dyson and Allison King.

“They did the responsible thing getting a limo so they wouldn’t have to drive anywhere,” she said, adding the couples had several children between them who they left at home.

The 2001 Ford Excursion limousine was traveling southwest on Route 30 in Schoharie, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) north of New York City, when it failed to stop at 2 p.m. Saturday at a T-junction with state Route 30A, State Police First Deputy Superintendent Christopher Fiore said at a news conference in Latham, New York.

It went across the road and hit an unoccupied SUV parked at the Apple Barrel Country Store, killing the limousine driver, the 17 passengers, and two people outside the vehicle.

The crash “sounded like an explosion,” said Linda Riley, of nearby Schenectady, who was on a shopping trip with her sisters. She had been in another car parked at the store, saw a body on the ground and heard people start screaming.

The store manager, Jessica Kirby, told The New York Times the limo was coming down a hill at “probably over 60 mph.” In an email to The Associated Press, she complained that the junction where the crashed occurred is accident-prone.

“We have had 3 tractor trailer type trucks run through the stop through our driveway and into a field behind the business,” Kirby wrote. “All of these occurred during business hours and could’ve killed someone then.”

She added that the state Department of Transportation has banned heavy trucks from the intersection but there are constant smaller crashes. “More accidents than I can count.”

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

“This is one of the biggest losses of life that we’ve seen in a long, long time,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said.

It’s the deadliest transportation accident since February 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo, New York, killing 50 people, Sumwalt said.

And it appears to be the deadliest land-vehicle accident since a bus ferrying nursing home patients away from Hurricane Rita caught fire in Texas 2005, killing 23.

At the news conference, Fiore didn’t comment on the limo’s speed, or whether the limo occupants were wearing seat belts. Authorities didn’t release the names of the victims or speculate on what caused the limo to run the stop sign. Autopsies were being conducted.

Speaking through tears on the telephone, Valerie Abeling said her 34-year-old niece Erin Vertucci was among the victims, along with Vertucci’s newlywed husband, 30-year-old Shane McGowan.

“She was a beautiful, sweet soul; he was too,” Abeling said.

The couple was married in June at a “beautiful wedding” in upstate New York, Abeling said. “They had everything going for them.”

Vertucci, who grew up in Amsterdam, New York, was an administrative assistant at St. Mary’s Healthcare in Amsterdam, Abeling said.

The vehicle was an after-market stretch limousine, according to an official briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and thus declined further identification.

Safety issues on such vehicles have arisen before, most notably after a wreck on Long Island in July 2015 in which four women on a winery tour were killed. They were in a Lincoln Town Car that had been cut apart and rebuilt in a stretch configuration to accommodate more passengers. The limousine was trying to make a U-turn and was struck by a pickup.

A grand jury found that vehicles converted into stretch limousines often don’t have safety measures including side-impact air bags, reinforced rollover protection bars and accessible emergency exits. That grand jury called on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to assemble a task force on limousine safety.

Limousines built in factories are already required to meet stringent safety regulations, but when cars are converted into limos, safety features are sometimes removed, leading to gaps in safety protocols, the grand jury wrote.

On Sunday, New York’s senior U.S. Sen., Chuck Schumer, noted he asked NTSB to toughen standards after the 2015 crash. “I commend the NTSB’s immediate aid on scene and am very hopeful that we will have concrete answers soon,” Schumer said.

Limousine accidents remain rare, according to NHTSA data. They accounted for only one death crash out of 34,439 fatal accidents in 2016, the last year for which data is available.

Cuomo on Sunday released a statement saying, “My heart breaks for the 20 people who lost their lives in this horrific accident on Saturday in Schoharie. I commend the first responders who arrived on the scene and worked through the night to help … I have directed state agencies to provide every resource necessary to aid in this investigation and determine what led to this tragedy.”

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Salsberg reported from Boston. Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo in New York City, John Kekis in Latham, New York, and David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

Many Amazon Workers Don’t Trust Jeff Bezos

Many Amazon workers aren’t sure that the company’s decision to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour will actually result in more overall pay. The company will be getting rid of performance bonuses and its stock program, and employees had previously been expecting higher bonuses during the holiday season. Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the richest person in the world.

The policy change will begin Nov. 1 and affect 250,000 employees and 100,000 seasonal workers. Contractors will not be included. This policy change also does not address previous employee concerns such as having to work on holidays, productivity goals so high there is no time for bathroom breaks, and intense surveillance during the workday.

While independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders praised Bezos, many concerned workers did the paycheck calculations for themselves.

“I feel hugely disrespected,” a Maryland warehouse worker told The Associated Press about the so-called raise. “The ones who are loyal should be rewarded for loyalty, not smacked in the face.”

“Amazon isn’t giving its employees a raise, they’re taking money from us,” one Arizona worker told Yahoo. “It only looks good if folks don’t know the truth.” He said his hourly wage was being increased from $15.25 to $16.25, but that he had expected to earn a few thousand dollars from the now-canceled incentive programs.

One Pennsylvania warehouse worker told The Associated Press she expects to make $3,000 a year less without the bonus. A worker who spoke with Wired said he expects to see a loss of $1,400 a year.

During the holiday season, Amazon workers could previously expect bigger, incentive-based payments.

“The timing of this; I don’t think it’s that much of a coincidence,” the Amazon worker told Wired. “November and December were the months where they would double the attendance and productivity bonuses.”

Amazon said in a statement: “We can confirm that all hourly Operations and Customer Service employees will see an increase in their total compensation as a result of this announcement. In addition, because it’s no longer incentive-based, the compensation will be more immediate and predictable.” The company also said that it will introduce a program next year for employees to buy stock.

Sanders, who pushed Bezos to enact the policy and even introduced legislation last month called the Stop BEZOS Act, said that the point of the changes should be higher net pay for workers. “Our understanding is that the vast majority of Amazon workers are going to see wage increases,” he said. “I would hope that as a result of Amazon’s new policy, no worker, especially long-time employees, sees a reduction in total compensation. Amazon can afford to make all workers whole and should do that.”

How a Kavanaugh Court Will Take Us Back to the Dark Ages

Despite the considerable cloud over his head, Brett Kavanaugh was put on the Supreme Court on Saturday, in what may best be described as a plutocratic coup by the ruling-but-minority Republican Party. Since Kavanaugh succeeds Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often served as a swing vote on those occasions when a decision veered to the left, we can expect the Court to veer to the far right. Given that we have a racist, authoritarian demagogue in the White House, the gutting of the Supreme Court comes at the most perilous possible time for what’s left of our democracy.

1. The Muslim Ban. The Supreme Court upheld by a 5-4 majority Donald Trump’s visa ban on five Muslim-majority countries (along with a few cosmetic restrictions on Venezuela and N. Korea in a pathetic attempt to camouflage the flagrant racism of the executive order). Chief Justice John Roberts argued for an almost absolute right for the president to decide on immigration issues, despite the language in the law forbidding discrimination.

In Trump v. Hawaii, one of the two dissents was penned by Sonia Sotomayor and began this way:

“The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a “total and complete shutdown of Mus­lims entering the United States” because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security con­cerns. But this repackaging does little to cleanse Presi­dential Proclamation No. 9645 of the appearance of dis­crimination that the President’s words have created. Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus. That alone suffices to show that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their Estab­lishment Clause claim. The majority holds otherwise by ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Procla­mation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens. Because that troubling result runs contrary to the Constitution and our precedent, I dissent.”

A 5-4 decision is fragile and open to being reversed, despite the Court’s dislike of overruling its own precedents (stare decisis). Typically a 5-4 decision is later effectively overruled in a case that is larger than the original one in its implications. There was always hope that support for Trump’s arbitrary and discriminatory Muslim ban would eventually collapse. Kavanaugh, however, would certainly have voted with the majority, and his confirmation shores up that majority into the distant future.

The really dangerous thing is that Trump may not be done excluding Muslims, and the Kavanaugh court will let him do pretty much anything he wants to those applying for immigration

2. Gay Marriage. Kavanaugh is most dangerous where he turns out to be more conservative than Kennedy, whom he is succeeding. For instance, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which granted the right of gay marriage, was a 5-4 decision in which Kennedy’s was the swing vote. Kavanaugh refused to answer Kamala Harris’s question about the gay marriage decision, as to whether it was correctly decided. Over time he could well undermine this right for the LGBTQ community.

3. Torture. Trump has pledged to torture people, and to torture them with great brutality. The Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit brought against US officials on grounds that they had ordered the inmates tortured, letting stand a lower court ruling that gave the officials immunity on the grounds that they were just doing their jobs (the Nuremburg Defense!). Given the inclination of Trump to torture, more such cases may come before the court. Kavanaugh was a White House lawyer in the Bush administration and although he denies he ever was involved in torture debates back then, it remains to be see if he is eager (as Scalia was) to see people tortured by the US government.

4. A Woman’s Right to Choose. Kennedy had been the swing vote in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), which held that states could not impose an undue burden on a woman’s right to have an abortion. States whose politics are dominated by Evangelicals have been quietly making abortion unavailable by imposing Draconian regulations on abortion clinics that cause them to shut down. Many women have been de facto deprived of the right to decide whether to have a child by the unavailability of abortion facilities, which the states have connived at. (Many women don’t have the money to travel hundreds of miles and stay at a hotel for the procedure). Some more egregious such attempts have, however, been struck down by the Supreme Court, as in Texas a couple of years ago, pointing to the precedent of Casey. Kavanaugh would almost certainly overturn Casey if he gets the chance.

5. Big Money Dominating Politics. Citizens United (2010) and other recent Supreme Court cases allowing the super-rich to saturate the airwaves with advertising for the candidate they back, with full knowledge that they thereby ingratiate themselves with the candidate and can expect to call in favors– all this has made money king in the American electoral system. It isn’t that most Congressmen are personally bribed. It is their campaigns that receive the money. But a big war chest is job security for congressmen and senators.

Richard L. Hasen explains that “Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court in 2010 in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” rejected the idea that it is corruption for large donors to the campaign of a politician is corruption. Rather, the donor receives only “Ingratiation and access” which is permissible. In a case decided in 2014, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Chief Justice John Roberts went even further, celebrating the idea of politicians responding to the wishes of big donors and spenders. Not only are “ingratiation and access” afforded those making large campaign contributions not corruption, Roberts explained. Donors “embody a central feature of democracy — that constituents support candidates who share their beliefs and interests, and candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to those concerns.” In a democracy, Roberts tells us, we should want politicians to be responsive to big donors.

Citizens United was another fragile 5-4 decision that could have been weakened or ultimately overturned. Now, it is 6-3 and likely become set in stone to the vast detriment of our democracy.

6. Workers Rights. Social scientists have found that the rapid march of the United States toward being a highly unequal society and a plutocracy has been enabled in part by the corporations’ gutting of the union movement. The right to form unions and to pursue collective bargaining and to go on strike have been seriously degraded, so of course employers do to workers whatever they can get away with, including grossly underpaying them. Kavanaugh’s rulings have made unions very afraid. In fact, Kavanaugh’s own senate hearing was the best argument for not enabling privileged wealth in the US. But now, workers are well and truly screwed, and so are we as a nation.

 

Kavanaugh Confirmation Followed Immediately by This Call: ‘Impeach Kavanaugh’

While throngs of protesters on the steps of the Capitol Building continued to demonstrate to the bitter end and shouts of “Shame on You!” came from the gallery inside the Senate chamber as the vote proceeded, the U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed Brett Kavanaugh as the next associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday afternoon.

But in the immediate wake of his 50-48 approval—among the closest in U.S. history and along nearly strict partisan lines—his opponents immediately responded not with grumblings of defeat, but with promises to oust from office those who voted “yes” while also vowing to pursue the very serious allegations levied against Kavanaugh and raising the real possibility of impeachment proceedings for his lying to lawmakers during his confirmation process.

“Brett Kavanaugh may have just been confirmed to the Supreme Court, but the grassroots movement that came together to oppose him will only continue to grow,” declared Heidi Hess, co-director of the progressive group CREDO Action, immediately after the vote. “Eventually, when the dust settles and the right-wing fever that has overtaken Congress breaks, Kavanaugh will be impeached for lying under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee, or for other criminal acts.”

“A majority of Americans opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court and we believe a majority will ultimately support his impeachment as well.” – CREDO Action Co-Director Heidi Hesshttps://t.co/pFg00mKMpA

— CREDO Mobile (@CREDOMobile) October 6, 2018

“No one is above the law, not even a Supreme Court Justice,” said John Bonifaz, co-founder and president of Free Speech For People, a group that has already launched a website, ImpeachBrett.org, which includes a petition calling for an immediate probe by the House of Representatives.

Brett Kavanaugh MUST be impeached and removed from the bench. We are calling on @HouseJudiciary to launch immediately an impeachment investigation. Learn more here: https://t.co/mIWPpp3pRl #ImpeachBrett #StopKavanaugh pic.twitter.com/z610eBhGfg

— FreeSpeechForPeople (@FSFP) October 6, 2018

“Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has presented powerful and credible testimony that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when she was 15 years old,” Bonifaz stated. “And, there are serious allegations from two other women that he committed other acts of sexual violence. All of this warrants an immediate impeachment investigation.”

The progressive advocacy group Roots Action agreed, calling impeachment the only constitutional remedy for the devastating confirmation that has outraged millions nationwide. “The House of Representatives has impeached 15 judges, including one on the Supreme Court,” the group declared in a email to supporters. “Now, we must demand that the House provide what hasn’t yet happened — a full investigation of Kavanaugh’s record, which includes perjury on numerous topics.”

Here’s what’s on our mind. Republicans in the Senate just voted to validate every homophobic, xenophobic, close-minded, privileged, idiotic, sexist, and racist, comment that their president spews.#Vote #GOTV #NovemberIsComing#ImpeachKavanaugh

— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) October 6, 2018

The confirmation of Kavanaugh, said Anna Galland, executive director of the MoveOn Civic Fund, “underlines the central importance of winning elections” and her group is vowing to help make sure that Republicans pay the price in the upcoming mid-terms and beyond.

“At the end of the day,” Galland stated, “most Americans reject Trump and Republicans’ right-wing extremism and want a country where everyone is treated with dignity and respect and constitutional rights are maintained. If we organize, mobilize, and vote, we will win. We must all commit to action in coming weeks to take back control of our government from right-wing extremists, and to lay the groundwork from which we can build a better future.”

BREAKING: These are the senators who just voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. They are on the wrong side of history. We will never forget this vote. pic.twitter.com/JEcf93NlGq

— NWLC (@nwlc) October 6, 2018

While the immediate call by many was to make sure every single Senator who voted in favor of Kavanaugh be held accountable at the ballot box, the call for his impeachment goes towards the question of the judicial system’s overall integrity and how—if it’s shown that he lied to or misled the Senate in any manner—he could ever be trusted to serve on the nation’s highest court.

How could the impeachment proceed? According to Roots Action:

Many experts are saying that Republicans will likely lose control of the House in early January — setting the stage for House hearings to properly expose the facts, propel impeachment and force the Senate to convene a trial that could remove Kavanaugh from office.

An uphill climb? Sure. But imperative. And that’s all the more reason to launch a strong campaign for impeaching Kavanaugh.

As Common Dreams reported earlier on Saturday, some political strategists are saying now is the opportunity for Democrats to conduct for themselves the investigation that the White House and the GOP-controlled Senate Judiciary refused to conduct. Such an investigation could include public hearing in which witnesses could testify publicly and the pertinent facts excluded from the FBI’s probe last week could also be presented to the public in a methodical and transparent fashion.

Writing for LifeHacker last week, Beth Skwarecki, explained:

Impeachment isn’t just for presidents. The Constitution allows other officials to be impeached, including Supreme Court justices. No justice of that court has been successfully removed through impeachment—yet.

The process has the same two steps as for presidents. The House of Representatives can vote, with a simple majority, to impeach a justice or other federal official. Then the Senate holds proceedings similar to a trial, then votes on whether to convict. If two-thirds of the Senate vote to convict, the justice is removed from office.

In addition to being impeachable over “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” According to the Brennan Center, 15 federal judges, including justices, have been impeached—some successfully, some not. The most common grounds for impeachment were “”false statements, favoritism toward litigants or special appointees, intoxication on the bench, and abuse of the contempt power.”

For his part, Rep. Jerrold Nalder (D-NY) has said that if the Democrats win the majority of the House in the November mid-terms nothing will stop him from opening a probe into Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct and perjury allegations.

“It is not something we are eager to do,” Mr. Nadler told the New York Times on Friday. “But the Senate having failed to do its proper constitutionally mandated job of advise and consent, we are going to have to do something to provide a check and balance, to protect the rule of law and to protect the legitimacy of one of our most important institutions.”

Why the Kavanaugh Confirmation Has Shaken Me

I was sexually assaulted when I was a teenager.

I was lucky, I got away.

I don’t remember the date … or even the year.

I went home that night but have no idea how I got there.

I never told my parents.

I don’t remember the man’s name.

I never reported it to authorities.

But I can describe the office where he assaulted me.  I remember where the desk was in relationship to the door because I kept staring at the door, willing for someone to knock. I remember the beautiful Persian miniatures hanging on the wall—he had spent time explaining them to me. I remember trying to rub my mouth off my face after I managed to escape. I remember my terror.

I was a freshman or sophomore at UCLA, and a reporter for the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper.  It was sometime from 1963 to 1965.   I could look up the year because the Shah of Iran was coming to UCLA—I think to receive an honorary degree—and many students were planning to protest. But I don’t want to make the memories any clearer than they still are after all these years. I was assigned to interview a visiting professor from Iran and report on his thoughts about the Shah and the planned protests. The professor attacked me in his office; he pushed me onto his desk.

After the attack, I told several friends who helped me deal with it emotionally. None of them suggested going to the authorities. This was more than 50 years ago. Sexual harassment wasn’t a term. #MeToo didn’t exist. But I am outraged after listening to the ridicule and mockery that Trump and his supporters are leveling at Dr. Christine Blasey Ford because:

“She doesn’t remember when it happened.”

“She doesn’t remember how she got home.”

“She never told her parents.”

All of those charges can apply to me.  But it happened. Outrage is too mild a term for what I am feeling. I cannot stay silent.

Brazil Votes Amid Anger at the Ruling Class

SAO PAULO — Brazilians are choosing their leaders Sunday in an election marked by intense anger at the ruling class following years of political and economic turmoil, including what may be the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history.

Many had thought that “throw-the-bums-out” rage would buoy the chances of an outsider and end the hegemony of the center-left Workers’ Party and the center-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party, which have for years battled it out for the presidency.

Like much in this election, it hasn’t turned out as predicted. The man who has benefited most from the anger is a 27-year veteran of Congress — Jair Bolsonaro — whose outsider status is based largely on hard-right positions that have alienated as many as they have attracted — nostalgia for a military dictatorship, insults to women and gay people and calls to fight crime by loosening controls on already deadly police forces.

In second place is former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party, which has won the last four presidential elections.

Bolsonaro garnered 36 percent in the latest Datafolha poll, with Haddad 14 points behind. The poll interviewed 19,552 people Friday and Saturday and has a margin of error of 2 percentage points. If no one gets a majority on Sunday, a runoff will be held Oct. 28.

“In general, these are the strangest elections I’ve ever seen,” said Monica de Bolle, director of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s shaping up to be a contest between the two weakest candidates possible.”

The campaign to run Latin America’s largest economy, which is a major trade partner for countries in the region and a diplomatic heavyweight, has been unpredictable and tense. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led initial polls by a wide margin, but was banned from running after a corruption conviction. Bolsonaro was stabbed at a rally in early September and campaigned from a hospital bed in recent weeks. And all along, Brazilians have said their faith in their leaders and their hopes for the future are waning.

This election was once seen as the great hope for ending a turbulent era in which many politicians and business executives were jailed on corruption charges, a president was impeached and removed from office in controversial proceedings, and the economy suffered a protracted recession.

Instead, the two front-runners merely reflect the rabid divisions that have opened up in Brazilian politics following Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment and the revelations emerging from the “Car Wash” graft probe.

Bolsonaro, whose base tends to be middle class, has painted a nation in collapse, where drug traffickers and politicians steal with equal impunity, and a moral rot has set in. He has advocated loosening gun ownership laws so individuals could fight off criminals, giving police a freer hand to use force and restoring “traditional” Brazilian values — though some take issue with his definition of those values in light of his approving allusions to the past military dictatorship and his repeated derisive comments about women, blacks and gay people.

“There is a strong desire for change,” said Andre Portela, an economics professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a leading university and think tank. “Bolsonaro has been able to channel that and present himself as the bearer of change, though it’s not clear if he really would be.”

Haddad and the Workers’ Party, meanwhile, have portrayed a country hijacked by an elite that will protect its privileges at all costs and can’t bear to see the lives of poor and working class Brazilians improve.

Haddad has promised to roll back President Michel Temer’s economic reforms that he says eroded workers’ rights, to increase investment in social programs and to bring back the boom years Brazil experienced under his mentor, da Silva.

Caught in the middle are Brazilians who dislike both candidates and see them as symbols of a broken system.

Perhaps nothing has demonstrated the dysfunction more than the Car Wash investigation. Prosecutors alleged that Brazil’s government was run like a cartel for years, handing out billions of dollars in public contracts in exchange for kickbacks and bribes. Revelations of suitcases of cash, leaked recordings of incriminating exchanges between powerbrokers and the jailing of some of the of the country’s most powerful people unfolded like a Hollywood script — and then became one: Netflix released a (barely) fictionalized account of the probe this year.

Yet it’s not clear that voters will reject the many politicians implicated in the scandal because the electoral system heavily favors incumbents and big parties.

The election has seen large increases in the numbers of candidates from marginalized groups, including black, indigenous and transgender Brazilians, and some think the anti-establishment feelings could translate into a more representative ruling class.

___

Associated Press writer Peter Prengaman contributed to this report.

California Bans Gun Sales to Most People Under 21

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Most people under 21 won’t be able to buy guns in California starting next year under a law Gov. Jerry Brown announced signing Friday.

It will prevent people under 21 from buying rifles and other types of guns. State law already bans people under 21 from buying handguns.

The new law exempts law enforcement, members of the military and people with hunting licenses from the restriction.

It was one of dozens of bills Brown took action on.

Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino pointed to the shooting at a Florida high school earlier this year that killed 17 people as the reason for his bill banning gun sales and transfers to people under 21.

“I was determined to help California respond appropriately to the tragic events our country has recently faced on high school campuses,” Portantino said in a statement. “I feel it is imperative that California leads when Washington refuses to act.”

Brown also signed a bill to prohibit gun ownership for people who have been hospitalized or otherwise placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold for risk of hurting themselves or others twice in one year. That law would let those people ask a court every five years to return their guns.

He also signed a bill to ban people with certain domestic violence misdemeanors from owning guns for life.

In addition to the gun-related bills, he vetoed a measure that would have let bars in some cities serve alcohol until 4 a.m., which he said would result in more drunken driving.

California currently lets bars serve alcohol until 2 a.m.

“I believe we have enough mischief from midnight to 2 without adding two more hours of mayhem,” he wrote in his veto message.

It would have allowed extended hours in nine California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Brown also vetoed a bill that would have opened the door for parents to serve edible marijuana to their children on school grounds to treat medical conditions. Children could be given cannabis only if the school board adopted a policy to allow it.

Brown said in his veto message that he’s concerned about exposing youth to marijuana and believes the bill is too broad, allowing its use for all ailments.

“I think we should pause before going much further down this path,” he wrote.

Kavanaugh Confirmed, 50-48, in Near Party-Line Vote

WASHINGTON — The bitterly polarized U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed Brett Kavanaugh on Saturday to join the Supreme Court, delivering an election-season triumph to President Donald Trump that could swing the court rightward for a generation after a battle that rubbed raw the country’s cultural, gender and political divides.

The near party-line vote was 50-48, capping a fight that seized the national conversation after claims emerged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted women three decades ago — which he emphatically denied. Those claims magnified the clash from a routine Supreme Court struggle over judicial ideology into an angrier, more complex jumble of questions about victims’ rights, the presumption of innocence and personal attacks on nominees.

Acrimonious to the end, the battle featured a climactic roll call that was interrupted several times by protesters in the Senate Gallery before Capitol Police removed them.

The vote gave Trump his second appointee to the court, tilting it further to the right and pleasing conservative voters who might have revolted against GOP leaders had Kavanaugh’s nomination flopped. Democrats hope that the roll call, exactly a month from elections in which House and Senate control are in play, will prompt infuriated women and liberals to stream to the polls to oust Republicans.

In final remarks just before the voting, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said a vote for Kavanaugh was “a vote to end this brief, dark chapter in the Senate’s history and turn the page toward a brighter tomorrow.”

Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York looked ahead to November, appealing to voters beyond the Senate chamber: “Change must come from where change in America always begins: the ballot box.”

Rep. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, confronting a tough re-election race next month in a state that Trump won in 2016 by a landslide, was the sole Democrat to vote against Kavanaugh. Every voting Republican backed the 53-year-old conservative judge.

Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, the only Republican to oppose the nominee, voted “present,” offsetting the absence of Kavanaugh supporter Steve Daines of Montana, who was attending his daughter’s wedding. That rare procedural maneuver left Kavanaugh with the same two-vote margin he’d have had if Murkowski and Daines had both voted.

It was the closest roll call to confirm a justice since 1881, when Stanley Matthews was approved by 24-23, according to Senate records.

Murkowski said Friday that Kavanaugh was “a good man” but his “appearance of impropriety has become unavoidable.” Republicans hold only a 51-49 Senate majority and therefore had little support to spare.

The outcome, telegraphed Friday when the final undeclared senators revealed their views, was devoid of the shocks that had come almost daily since Christine Blasey Ford said last month that an inebriated Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a 1982 high school get-together.

Since then, the country watched agape at electric moments. These included the emergence of two other accusers; an unforgettable Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which a composed Ford and a seething Kavanaugh told their diametrically opposed stories, and a truncated FBI investigation that the agency said showed no corroborating evidence and Democrats lambasted as a White House-shackled farce.

All the while, crowds of demonstrators — mostly Kavanaugh opponents — ricocheted around the Capitol’s grounds and hallways, raising tensions, chanting slogans, interrupting lawmakers’ debates, confronting senators and often getting arrested.

Trump weighed in Saturday morning on behalf of the man he nominated in July. “Big day for America!” he tweeted.

Democrats said Kavanaugh would push the court too far, including possible sympathetic rulings for Trump should the president encounter legal problems from the special counsel’s investigations into Russian connections with his 2016 presidential campaign. And they said Kavanaugh’s record and fuming testimony at a now-famous Senate Judiciary Committee hearing showed he lacked the fairness, temperament and even honesty to become a justice.

But the fight was defined by the sexual assault accusations. And it was fought against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and Trump’s unyielding support of his nominee and occasional mocking of Kavanaugh’s accusers.

About 100 anti-Kavanaugh protesters climbed the Capitol’s East Steps as the vote approached, pumping fists and waving signs. U.S. Capitol Police began arresting some of them. Hundreds of other demonstrators watched from behind barricades. Protesters have roamed Capitol Hill corridors and grounds daily, chanting, “November is coming,” ”Vote them out” and “We believe survivors.”

On Friday, in the moment that made clear Kavanaugh would prevail, Collins delivered a speech saying that Ford’s Judiciary Committee telling of the alleged 1982 assault was “sincere, painful and compelling.” But she also said the FBI had found no corroborating evidence from witnesses whose names Ford had provided.

“We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy,” said Collins, perhaps the chamber’s most moderate Republican.

Manchin used an emailed statement to announce his support for Kavanaugh moments after Collins finished talking. Manchin, the only Democrat supporting the nominee, faces a competitive re-election race next month in a state Trump carried in 2016 by 42 percentage points.

Manchin expressed empathy for sexual assault victims. But he said that after factoring in the FBI report, “I have found Judge Kavanaugh to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution.”

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who has repeatedly battled with Trump and will retire in January, said he, too, planned to vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Vice President Mike Pence planned to be available in case his tie-breaking vote was needed.

In the procedural vote Friday that handed Republicans their crucial initial victory, senators voted 51-49 to limit debate, defeating Democratic efforts to scuttle the nomination with endless delays.

When Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July, Democrats leapt to oppose him, saying that past statements and opinions showed he’d be a threat to the Roe v. Wade case that assured the right to abortion. They said he also seemed too ready to rule for Trump in a possible federal court case against the president.

Yet Kavanaugh’s path to confirmation seemed unfettered until Ford and two other women emerged with sexual misconduct allegations from the 1980s.

Kavanaugh would replace the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was a swing vote on issues such as abortion, campaign finance and same-sex marriage.

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Matthew Daly, Padmananda Rama, Ken Thomas and Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.