Chris Hedges's Blog, page 460
September 26, 2018
Trump: I’d ‘Certainly Prefer Not’ to Fire Rosenstein
Rosenstein is overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and his dismissal would put that probe in jeopardy and create a political storm.
In suggesting that he might postpone Thursday’s meeting, Trump said he was focused on the extraordinary Senate Judiciary Committee hearing set for the same day with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and a woman who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers.
“I may call Rod tonight or tomorrow and ask for a little bit of a delay to the meeting, because I don’t want to do anything that gets in the way of this very important Supreme Court pick,” Trump said.
The Justice Department referred questions about the scheduling of the meeting to the White House.
Any delay in the meeting would prolong the uncertainty of Rosenstein’s status. Rosenstein headed to the White House on Monday morning preparing to be fired and had discussed a possible resignation over the weekend with White House officials. But after meeting with chief of staff John Kelly and speaking by phone with Trump, he got a reprieve with the Trump meeting scheduled for Thursday.
Since then, the White House has sought to tamp down anxiety that Rosenstein would be fired.
White House officials called senators Monday to say Trump had said he wouldn’t be firing Rosenstein at the meeting, according to two people familiar with the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions. Aides have advised Trump against taking any extreme actions ahead of the midterm elections with his party’s majorities in Congress already under threat.
“Not wanting to fire Rod Rosenstein is consistent with what I have understood for weeks, not just days,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican who talks to Trump often.
Friends and former colleagues of Rosenstein say they didn’t expect him to step aside and give up oversight of Russia investigation and the enormous swath of Justice Department operations for which he is responsible.
Rosenstein, who has spent his entire career in government, “has tremendous loyalty to the department,” said former Justice Department lawyer and longtime friend James Trusty.
“He’s a very long-run, historical-minded guy in a lot of ways,” Trusty said. “I think he may have some confidence that history will be kinder to him than politicians are.”
Trump’s remarks Wednesday followed a chaotic period that began Friday with reports that Rosenstein had last year discussed possibly secretly recording the president and invoking the Constitution to remove Trump from office. The Justice Department issued statements Friday aimed at denying the reports, including one that said the wiretap remark was meant sarcastically.
Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017, oversees his work and has repeatedly defended the breadth and scope of the probe. Trump has been critical of Rosenstein’s oversight of the probe, but the two have at times displayed a warm working relationship, and Rosenstein has been spared some of the more personal and antagonistic broadsides leveled against Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Even if Rosenstein survives the week, it’s not clear how much longer he’ll be around. Trump has signaled that he may fire Sessions after the midterms, and Rosenstein could go with him.
But it could be sooner: Some officials around Trump believe Rosenstein’s reported musings about invoking the 25th Amendment could make it defensible for Trump to part with him, even during the final sprint to Election Day.
Rosenstein’s friends and former colleagues describe him as exceptionally committed to the Justice Department — one said he “bleeds” for the agency — and unlikely to leave on his own, though they say he respects the chain of command enough to resign if asked.
He joined the department in 1990, serving as a public corruption prosecutor, a Tax Division supervisor and a member of independent counsel Ken Starr’s Whitewater team. He was named U.S. attorney in Maryland by President George W. Bush and held the position throughout the Obama administration — remarkable longevity for a position that typically turns over with changes in political power.
Within weeks of being confirmed as deputy attorney general, he was engulfed in controversy by writing a memo critical of then-FBI Director James Comey, which the White House cited as justification for Comey’s firing.
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Associated Press writers Chad Day, Ken Thomas and Michael Balsamo in Washington and Zeke Miller in New York contributed to this report.
Trump Is the Laughingstock of the World—Literally
The laughter spoke volumes.
“One year ago, I stood before you for the first time in this grand hall,” Donald Trump, the 45th and current president of the United States, said, addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations. The auditorium was filled with senior diplomats and heads of state from around the planet, gathered for the world body’s annual general debate, a celebration of multilateralism where the will of the global collective had an opportunity to be heard over the cacophony of the five superpowers who occupy the permanent seats of the Security Council.
As the leader of the host nation, the American president followed the speeches given by the presidents of the General Assembly and Brazil. Trump’s was the first major address, and the world’s diplomats eagerly awaited his words.
“[Last year] I addressed the threats facing our world,” Trump said, “and I presented a vision to achieve a brighter future for all of humanity. Today, I stand before the United Nations General Assembly to share the extraordinary progress we’ve made.”
Just a few days earlier, Trump had delivered one of his trademark rants at a rally in Las Vegas, vowing to “Keep America Great.” He has grown accustomed to crowds of loyal supporters cheering on his ludicrous claims regarding the accomplishments of his presidential tenure to date.
“In less than two years,” Trump told the General Assembly, setting up a go-to line used frequently among his political base, “my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.”
Then, something remarkable happened. There was no applause, but rather laughter, as the world’s diplomats acknowledged the uncomfortable reality that America’s leader—ostensibly the most powerful and influential person in the world—had transformed himself into a sad joke.
“America’s …” Trump tried to continue, before being compelled to smile at the laughter breaking out before him. “So true,” he said, to even more laughter. “Didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s OK.” The gathered diplomats laughed some more, before politely applauding to make an awkward moment less so.
An American president had just become—literally—the laughingstock of the world.
This moment was a long time coming. Donald Trump was elected in part because he had promised to challenge the established way of doing business. A businessman with a penchant for showmanship, Trump had packaged his worldview into oversimplified sound bites that mirrored the ignorance and fears of much of the American electorate who supported his views about the world in which they lived.
Everything was reduced to transactional terms—not what was fair, balanced or good for the benefit of all, but rather what was good for America. In many ways, this kind of economic exceptionalism did not differ from those administrations that had preceded Trump—America had long enjoyed an advantageous relationship with the rest of the world. But Trump had eliminated the niceties and diplomatic veneer that had previously been used to disguise American greed. For Trump and his supporters, “America First” meant “America Only.”
Campaign rhetoric has a tendency to soften in the face of reality once a candidate becomes an incumbent, and there was a hope among many Americans—those who voted for Trump and those who didn’t—that the New York real estate mogul would surround himself with people who, when confronted with the reality of the world, would translate the president-elect’s reality television approach into something that more or less resembled actual policy. This did not come to pass. Rex Tillerson, the chairman of ExxonMobil who had taken over the reins at the State Department, was never able to win the confidence of Trump, who viewed himself as America’s senior diplomat. Following the self-destruction of Michael Flynn, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster took over as the national security adviser in what would be a futile effort to bring a semblance of control to a national security apparatus that had devolved into chaos.
Only James Mattis, the former Marine Corps general known as “Mad Dog,” was able to stave off Trump’s predilection for interference, keeping the Department of Defense a talking point for the president without ceding control. (“We have secured record funding for our military,” Trump bragged to the U.N. General Assembly, “$700 billion this year, and $716 billion next year. Our military will soon be more powerful than it has ever been before!”)
Twice Trump had ordered Mattis to carry out military strikes against Syria, ostensibly in response to alleged chemical weapons attacks perpetrated by the Syrian government of Bashar Assad; twice Mattis had his military planners scale back the scope of the strikes to avoid potential escalation with Russian forces operating inside Syria.
Trump had a vision of America’s relationship with the world that did not comport with the status quo. But “rip it up,” however pleasing to the ear of the average fan of “Make America Great Again,” does not automatically translate to sound policy. Trump wanted to change the world but had no plan for what he would do once the changes took place.
Like Mattis at Defense, Tillerson and McMaster did their best to constrain the president’s ambition to drastically rewrite America’s global playbook, cautioning against withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015, moderating the president’s bellicose words toward North Korea, and putting the brakes on Trump’s budding friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Frustrated, Trump took a page from his time as the star of the reality television show “The Apprentice” and fired both Tillerson and McMaster.
In their stead, Trump moved the Kansas Republican-lawmaker-turned-director-of -the-CIA, Mike Pompeo, to the State Department, and brought in John Bolton as his national security adviser. Almost immediately, Trump went out of control, precipitously withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement, convening and attending a summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, engaging in a full-scale trade war with China and Europe, and trash-talking NATO before attending a summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, where the American president looked small while on stage with the diminutive Russian leader.
The decision to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal has isolated the United States from the rest of the world—not a single other signatory to the agreement has followed Trump in leaving the agreement, with which Iran is universally acknowledged as complying. Instead, Trump finds himself diplomatically isolated, reduced to using the threat of secondary sanctions to bully other nations into severing economic ties to Iran by complying with America’s unilateral sanctions. In the face of these threats, many nations are working diligently to find workarounds, further diminishing U.S. influence.
While demonstrating that the word of the United States has no value through his actions vis-à-vis the Iran nuclear agreement, Trump has sought the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula without the benefit of the kind of detailed preparatory work that past efforts at arms control (including the Iran nuclear agreement) entailed. The result has been grandiose rhetoric backed up with little of substance. North Korea has shunned Pompeo, referring to his style of diplomacy as “gangster-like,” stroking Trump’s ego with kind words while they turn to others—China and South Korea in particular—to negotiate an actual agreement.
Trump has exaggerated the impact of trade imbalances with both China and Europe (and Canada and Mexico, for that matter) to denigrate not only existing trade agreements, but also disparage and undermine the efficacy of the World Trade Organization, a global body created to resolve trade disputes between members. As a result, the United States is now engaged in an escalating economic conflict with two of its most important trading partners—China and Europe—involving the imposition of crippling tariffs in the face of unilateral American demands regarding how things should be. (The European trade war has been put on temporary hold while negotiations between the U.S. and the EU take place; China, on the other hand, has told its citizens to prepare for a full-scale trade war with the United States that will last decades.)
One of Donald Trump’s signature stances during his campaign was to question the efficacy and viability of the NATO alliance, couching it—rightly so—as a Cold War relic, largely underwritten by the American taxpayer. It is one thing to question the utility of a decades-old treaty created for containing the now-defunct Soviet Union; it is another to advocate for the demise of this organization void of any semblance of a plan on what would replace it. NATO has always been an American-led show; without the U.S., there simply would be no NATO. Trump’s effort to shift the burden of sustaining the alliance onto Europe without similarly transferring the mantle of leadership is a prime example of his America First philosophy’s fundamental disconnect with the world as it is.
While the sycophantic governments of the Baltic states and Poland court an increase in NATO (read American) military presence on their soil as a deterrence against possible Russian aggression, the rest of Europe deals in a reality more shaped by North African and Middle Eastern immigration. Trump has advocated for an arbitrary increase in NATO defense spending without undertaking a realistic look at the mission it would fund. The bottom line is that Europe exists in the real world, where Russian gas is a needed commodity, and the peaceful coexistence of Russia and Europe a realistic probability. When the United States allows Poland and the Baltics to define the NATO military mission, and attacks Germany for entering an economically sound gas pipeline construction deal with Russia, he undermines the very foundation of the organization he claims he is trying to reform, accomplishing little more than pushing Europe toward a common policy position with Moscow.
American relations with Russia have taken a tragicomic turn, with the Trump administration facing political paralysis in the face of ongoing investigations into allegations that his presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. The work of special counsel Robert Mueller has resulted in numerous indictments, arrests and convictions, including those of former national security adviser Mike Flynn, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others. Trump himself has turned up the political heat on this matter, threatening to shut down the work of Mueller’s team, while weighing whether to fire Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein, who, in the face of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from all matters Russia, is responsible for overseeing the work of the Mueller probe.
While this passion play unfolds, the real world—one populated by a resurgent, nuclear-armed Russia flexing its muscles in the Baltics, Ukraine and Syria—carries on. Trump has played a dangerous double game with Russia, simultaneously singing the praises of its leader while declaring himself to be Putin’s harshest foe, imposing a wave of economic sanctions designed to punish the country and deter malign activity. Meanwhile, he has reversed course in Syria, where he had promised to withdraw American troops in recognition of Russia’s success in helping the Assad government defeat rebel forces—including those trained and equipped by the United States—in favor of a more malignant strategy: one in which American troops remain, uninvited and in perpetuity, as a means of baiting Moscow into another Afghanistan-like quagmire.
Trump is only deluding himself. The recent downing of a Russian surveillance aircraft over Syria during the course of an Israeli airstrike, along with the death of 15 crewmen, has prompted a radical reshaping of Russian policy, with the transfer of control over advanced S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries to Syrian forces, the integration of these missile units into an advanced air defense management system never before deployed outside of Russia, and the establishment of no-fly zones around Russian bases in Syria.
The new Russian air defense configuration places the air forces of Israel, the United States and others at extreme risk should any effort be undertaken to strike targets that fall under its umbrella of protection, greatly increasing the possibility of a military confrontation with Russia that could escalate dangerously.
Any potential U.S.-Russian confrontation must take into consideration the reality of the considerable nuclear arsenals possessed by both powers. Trump’s aggressive rhetoric toward Russia has been matched by the Russian deployment of several advanced nuclear weapons systems, all of which are designed to defeat American missile defenses. These new weapons are somewhat constrained by existing arms control agreements. However, the poisonous state of U.S.-Russian relations under President Trump has resulted in zero progress in negotiating new arms control agreements, a dangerous oversight given that the existing New START treaty, negotiated by the Obama administration, expires in 2021.
Trump’s hawkish new coterie of advisers—Pompeo, Bolton and Nikki Haley, the South Carolina governor-turned-U.N.-ambassador—appears oblivious to the risk of war with Russia, believing that American unilateralism is a right that all nations must respect, regardless of circumstance or consideration. This notion of exceptionalism has extended to American relations with Iran, where, beyond the fallout surrounding Trump’s precipitous decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement, the United States has singled out what it terms malignant activity in the Middle East as justification for a new policy of confrontation designed to contain and roll back Iranian influence in the region. Both Bolton and Pompeo have openly advocated for regime change in Tehran, including increased American support for opposition groups founded in Iran’s ethnic Arab minority—something that, in the aftermath of the recent terror attack in Ahvaz, aligns the United States with other state sponsors of terror.
The withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, the transfer of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the severance of diplomatic relations with the Palestinians, the withdrawal from the Human Rights Conference, the denigration of the International Criminal Court—these and more examples of Trump Amerocentric vision world have transformed the United States from world leader to global bully. America’s allies remain loyal because of a shared history and hope for a better future post-Trump, and not because of any ideology pushed by the president and his advisers. The United States has never been more isolated from the rest of the world than it was on Tuesday morning, when its president stepped up to the dais at the U.N. General Assembly.
Trump bragged about his diplomatic success with North Korea, noting how his threats issued from the same platform the previous year had prompted Pyongyang to reach out to the United States—or more precisely, Trump himself—to negotiate its denuclearization and the terms of peace on the Korean peninsula. “We have engaged with North Korea,” Trump told the General Assembly, “to replace the specter of conflict with a bold and new push for peace. The missiles and rockets are no longer flying in every direction. Nuclear testing has stopped. Some military facilities are already being dismantled. Our hostages have been released. And as promised, the remains of our fallen heroes are being returned home to lay at rest in American soil.”
Left unsaid was the reality that diplomacy with North Korea—while a commendable achievement representing a break from the failed policies of the past—had accomplished little in terms of measurable, lasting results.
Negotiations with North Korea were very much on Donald Trump’s mind as he identified a new international target—”the corrupt dictatorship in Iran.”
In the morning hours of Tuesday, prior to his speech at the General Assembly, Trump tweeted: “Despite requests, I have no plans to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Maybe someday in the future. I am sure he is an absolutely lovely man!”
The Iranian president was quick to observe that not only had Iran not made any such requests, it had in fact turned down repeated requests for such a meeting by the Trump administration.
Trump’s tenuous relationship with fact-based reality was put on full display as he lashed out at Rouhani before the General Assembly. “Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death and destruction. They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.”
Unmentioned was the fact that Iran was in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government, while the United States had deployed its troops into Syria unilaterally, without the consent of Damascus and violating international law in the process. Also left unsaid was the role that America’s illegal and unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 played in shaping the events in the Levant that led to the Syrian conflict and the subsequent rise of Islamic State. The U.S. has spread more mayhem across the Middle East than Iran could ever hope to.
“Iran’s neighbors have paid a heavy toll for the [regime’s] agenda of aggression and expansion,” Trump declared. “That is why so many countries in the Middle East strongly supported my decision to withdraw the United States from the horrible 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal and reimpose nuclear sanctions.” While Trump’s decision may have been supported by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab states, it has been widely condemned elsewhere as inherently destabilizing.
Trump went on to state, “We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America,’ and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on earth. Just can’t do it.” Yet the fact remains that Iran poses no such threat and continues to operate in full compliance with a nuclear agreement designed to prevent the very scenario the president has outlined.
“We ask all nations to isolate Iran’s regime as long as its aggression continues,” Trump said, wrapping up his attack on Iran. “And we ask all nations to support Iran’s people as they struggle to reclaim their religious and righteous destiny.” The ugly irony of those words in the face of the Ahvaz terror attack seemed lost on the American president.
“America is governed by Americans,” Trump announced to the General Assembly. “We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.”
What the “doctrine of patriotism” meant was subsequently made clear when Trump announced that “[w]e are grateful for all the work the United Nations does around the world to help people build better lives for themselves and their families.” But, Trump observed, “few give anything to us. That is why we are taking a hard look at U.S. foreign assistance … we will examine what is working, what is not working, and whether the countries who receive our dollars and our protection also have our interests at heart. Moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends.”
The New York City real estate executive has transformed the crudeness of President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 rallying cry of “You’re either with us or against us” into terms a businessman could grasp—America will pay only for that which benefits American interests.
And the hell with the rest of the world.
This was the message the international community took away from Trump’s speech—America, and only America, matters.
The world listened, grimaced, and, as was the case of the German delegation after being singled out by Trump for its government’s gas deal with Russia, was left to laugh in frustration at a man who had clearly lost touch with reality.
But the ultimate irony of Trump’s embarrassing speech before the General Assembly was that it was Iran, the target of his angst and ire, that put the American president’s words into perspective. President Rouhani, responding to Trump’s attack on global institutions, observed that “[c]onfronting multilateralism is not a sign of strength. Rather it is a symptom of the weakness of intellect—it betrays an inability in understanding a complex and interconnected world.”
No truer words could have been spoken.
Women Roar in the Face of Men Like Trump, Kavanaugh, Cosby
It is a telling fact that the least surprising news item this week has been President Trump making himself the laughingstock of the world at the United Nations General Assembly. But aside from that predictable outcome of Trump’s presidency, several other enormously critical political clashes are expected to take place this week alone that were hard to imagine just a few years ago.
We will, first and foremost, see a fight over how seriously we take violence against women at Thursday’s Senate Judiciary hearing, at which Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the woman accusing him of attempted rape will testify. But at the same hearing, we will find out just how deep Republicans and Trump will sink into a pit of ugliness of their own creation in order to cement the position of a deeply unpopular nominee to the Supreme Court—a man who could jeopardize so many rights we take for granted.
The breathtaking pace of destruction wrought over the past two years ought to be viewed as the desperate last gasp of a defunct conservative ideology that is utterly shameless in its designs and boundless in its scope. No issues are sacrosanct when it comes to today’s Trump-supporting, card-carrying Republican Party—from every woman’s right to safety and security; to workers’ rights to living wages, decent jobs, health care and Social Security; to immigrants’ rights to safety and family; to children’s rights to breathe clean air and drink clean water; to the right of our species to be safe from a changing climate; and to so many more. No issues, that is, save for the U.S. military and white supremacist Christian fundamentalism.
Against this barrage of violent assaults, our primary weapons—and I speak as a woman—are our voices and our bodies.
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has shown the world the power of her voice, intervening at the potential height of her alleged assaulter’s career, because she could no longer bear the facade of his perfect, pious life as he appeared easily to sail toward confirmation to the nation’s highest court. She knew exactly how right-wing media and trolls would threaten her with rhetorical and real violence. But she has spoken out anyway, just as Julie Swetnick and Deborah Ramirez, Kavanaugh’s other accusers, have done.
Women are speaking up everywhere. In the lead-up to Thursday’s hearing, an unnamed woman who was among hundreds protesting Kavanaugh’s nomination in Washington, D.C., on Monday relayed her own story of rape and survival in a packed hallway filled with activists and police. She is seen in a now-viral video saying, “He started choking me. … He raped me as he choked me. And when I heard Professor Ford say that Kavanaugh had his hand over her mouth, I believed her. You do not forget someone choking you.” She explained to the rapt crowd, “I came from Boston on the train last night because I cannot tolerate the way the Senate is responding to these allegations against Kavanaugh.” This brave woman has used the power of her voice and her presence in the nation’s capital to speak out. Similarly, celebrities like Alyssa Milano and Padma Lakshmi have added their stories of surviving rape to the record of male violence against women.
Conservatives certainly do not have a monopoly on rape and sexual assault of women. Just as a seemingly nice guy like Kavanaugh (he coaches girls’ basketball, we’re constantly reminded!) could have sexually assaulted multiple women while calling himself a good Catholic, and just as hundreds of Catholic priests claimed their religious leadership while systematically raping children, America’s favorite dad, Bill Cosby, spent his adult life as a serial sexual predator. This week, Cosby was dragged away in handcuffs for the crime of drugging and raping Andrea Constand, a punishment he is finally suffering because Constand stuck to her guns despite being called “a gold-digger, a con artist, and a pathological liar.” She continued speaking out because, in her own words, “[I]t was the right thing to do, and I wanted to do the right thing, even if it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.” Cosby, like Harvey Weinstein, is among that faction of powerful men in liberal Hollywood that has gotten away with committing violence against women for far too long.
Even the Democratic Party is not immune, as we have found. Most recently, Amy Alexander and Karen Monahan have used the power of their voices to call out a giant among progressives: Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who they say was physically abusive toward them. A Minnesota Democratic Party investigation into the allegations is now wrapping up. And of course we know of the misdeeds and alleged crimes of Bill Clinton and former Rep. John Conyers, among others.
Presidents, judges, priests, actors, producers, politicians and others are all part of the problem women face. So are corporations. Last week workers at McDonald’s restaurants in 10 cities walked off their jobs to protest rampant sexual harassment in their workplaces. These working-class women risked being fired or losing pay to speak out about what they have tolerated for far too long from their corporate employer. The action was backed by the pro-union labor group Fight for $15 and by Time’s Up, a group that emerged from the #MeToo movement. The McDonald’s workers aimed to highlight the shocking statistic that—in the words of one organizer—“One out of two workers experience workplace sexual violence under their watch.” Similar stories of rampant sexual abuse and harassment have emerged from companies like Ford, Vice Media and Bank of America.
Despite centuries of being shut out of decision-making power, women have slowly clawed their way into the halls of power and are pushing back against the juggernaut of patriarchal domination. An unprecedented number of women are running for office this year, with progressive women winning Democratic primary races and heading to Congress.
A powerful gathering of hundreds of women at the SHE THE PEOPLE summit in San Francisco last Thursday highlighted the gains that women of color in particular have made in the electoral realm. Joining their voices together in eloquent rage, figures including Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, soon-to-be Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and House candidate Deb Haaland of New Mexico shared the stage with powerhouse activists like Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, and Linda Sarsour of the Women’s March. They represent a long-neglected constituency of women of color who are flexing their political muscles and are ready to take on Trump, Kavanaugh, Cosby, Ellison, Weinstein, McDonald’s and all those arrayed against women.
We have reached a tipping point. With masses of women on the outside backing bold and powerful women on the inside refusing to be silenced and diminished, there can be no going back.
Cosby’s imprisonment and the coming derailment of Kavanaugh’s confirmation are only the beginning.
An Estimated 80,000 Died of Flu Last Winter in U.S.
NEW YORK — An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press.
Flu experts knew it was a very bad season, but at least one found the size of the estimate surprising.
“That’s huge,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice as much as what health officials previously considered a bad year, he said.
In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to 56,000, according to the CDC.
Last fall and winter, the U.S. went through one of the most severe flu seasons in recent memory. It was driven by a kind of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths, particularly among young children and the elderly.
The season peaked in early February and it was mostly over by the end of March.
Making a bad year worse, the flu vaccine didn’t work very well. Experts nevertheless say vaccination is still worth it because it makes illnesses less severe and save lives.
“I’d like to see more people get vaccinated,” Redfield told the AP at an event in New York. “We lost 80,000 people last year to the flu.”
CDC officials do not have exact counts of how many people die from flu each year. Flu is so common that not all flu cases are reported, and flu is not always listed on death certificates. So the CDC uses statistical models, which are periodically revised, to make estimates.
Fatal complications from the flu can include pneumonia, stroke and heart attack.
CDC officials called the 80,000 figure preliminary, and it may be slightly revised. But they said it is not expected to go down.
It eclipses the estimates for every flu season going back to the winter of 1976-1977. Estimates for many earlier seasons were not readily available.
Last winter was not the worst flu season on record, however. The 1918 flu pandemic, which lasted nearly two years, killed more than 500,000 Americans, historians estimate.
It’s not easy to compare flu seasons through history, partly because the nation’s population is changing. There are more Americans — and more elderly Americans — today than in decades past, noted Dr. Daniel Jernigan, a CDC flu expert.
U.S. health officials on Thursday are scheduled to hold a media event in Washington, D.C., to stress the importance of vaccinations to protect against whatever flu circulates this coming winter.
And how bad is it going to be? So far, the flu that’s been detected is a milder strain, and early signs are that the vaccine is shaping up to be a good match, Jernigan said.
The makeup of the vaccine has been changed this year to try to better protect against expected strains.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re seeing more encouraging signs than we were early last year,” Jernigan said.
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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.
Read the Sworn Statement of Julie Swetnick, Kavanaugh’s Third Accuser
Represented by attorney Michael Avenatti, a third woman, Julie Swetnick, came forward publicly on Wednesday to accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of gross sexual misconduct when he was a young man.
In her sworn statement, Swetnick says that she “fully understands the seriousness” of her accusations and charges that she was “gang raped” when she was a high school student at a party and that Kavanaugh, and his friend Mark Judge, were both “present.”
She also says she that Kavanaugh and his friends were known at the time for “targeting” girls with alcohol and drugs in order to take advantage of them sexually, and that she has “a firm recollection” that Judge and Kavanaugh were among the “boys lined up outside rooms at many [other] parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room.”
Read the full text of her 3-page Declaration—signed “under penalty of perjury”—below:
Congress Could Block Stronger State Efforts on Privacy
WASHINGTON—Congress wants to pass national rules governing how companies can use consumers’ data — though a major goal might simply be to block states from enacting stronger protections on their own.
It will be tricky to reconcile the concerns of privacy advocates who want people to have more control over the usage of their personal data — where they’ve been, what they view, who their friends are —and the powerful companies that mine it for profit.
The approach being pondered by policymakers and pushed by the internet industry leans toward a relatively light government touch. That’s in contrast to stricter European rules that took effect in May and the California law that takes effect in 2020. Other states are also considering more aggressive protections.
During a Senate hearing Wednesday, several Democratic senators warned that a national law could simply be used to override state efforts. Calling that pre-emption the “Holy Grail” for the industry, Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said it won’t get the bipartisan support it needs if it’s just to replace California’s law with a “non-progressive federal law.”
Senior executives from AT&T, Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter and Charter Communications all told a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that they support a federal proposal that could negate “inconsistent” state privacy laws.
Apple, which doesn’t rely on advertising for revenue, was the most vocal at setting conditions for that support. Bud Tribble, Apple’s vice president of software technology, said the bar would have to be “high enough in the federal legislation” to provide meaningful consumer protections.
The Senate Commerce Committee hearing comes amid increasing anxiety over safeguarding consumers’ data online and recent scandals that have stoked outrage among users and politicians.
An early move in President Donald Trump’s tenure set the tone on data privacy. He signed a bill into law in April 2017 that allows internet providers to sell information about their customers’ browsing habits. The legislation scrapped Obama-era online privacy rules aimed at giving consumers more control over how broadband companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon share that information.
Allie Bohm, policy counsel at the consumer group Public Knowledge, says examples abound of companies not only using the data to market products but also to profile consumers and restrict who sees their offerings: African Americans not getting access to ads for housing, minorities and older people excluded from seeing job postings.
The companies “aren’t going to tell that story” to the Senate panel, she said. “These companies make their money off consumer data.”
What is needed, privacy advocates maintain, is legislation to govern the entire “life cycle” of consumers’ data: how it’s collected, used, kept, shared and sold.
Meanwhile, regulators elsewhere have started to act.
The 28-nation European Union put in strict new rules this spring that require companies to justify why they’re collecting and using personal data gleaned from phones, apps and visited websites. Companies also must give EU users the ability to access and delete data, and to object to data use under one of the claimed reasons.
A similar law in California will compel companies to tell customers upon request what personal data they’ve collected, why it was collected and what types of third parties have received it. Companies will be able to offer discounts to customers who allow their data to be sold and to charge those who opt out a reasonable amount, based on how much the company makes selling the information.
Andrew DeVore, Amazon’s vice president and associate general counsel, told the Senate panel Wednesday that it should consider the “possible unintended consequences” of California’s approach. For instance, he says the state law defines personal information too broadly such that it could include all data.
The California law doesn’t take effect until 2020 and applies only to California consumers, but it could have fallout effects on other states. And it’s strong enough to have rattled Big Tech, which is seeking a federal data-privacy law that would be more lenient toward the industry.
“A national privacy framework should be consistent throughout all states, pre-empting state consumer-privacy and data security laws,” the Internet Association said in a recent statement. The group represents about 40 big internet and tech companies, spanning Airbnb and Amazon to Zillow. “A strong national baseline creates clear rules for companies.”
The Trump White House said this summer that the administration is working on it, meeting with companies and other interested parties. Thune’s pronouncement and one from a White House official stress that a balance should be struck in any new legislation — between government supervision and technological advancement.
The goal is a policy “that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said. “We look forward to working with Congress on a legislative solution.”
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Matt O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
Trump Accuses China of Meddling in Upcoming Election
UNITED NATIONS—President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused China of attempting to interfere in the upcoming United States congressional elections, claiming the Chinese are motivated by opposition to his tough trade policy.
The Chinese said it wasn’t so.
Trump, speaking in front of world leaders while chairing the United Nations Security Council for the first time, made his accusation amid the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election to help him and concerns that the November elections could also be vulnerable.
“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election,” Trump said “They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade.”
Asked later what evidence he had, he replied, “Plenty of evidence,” but he didn’t provide any.
H alleged again, “They would like to see me not win because this is the first time ever that they’ve been confronted on trade. And we are winning and we’re winning big. And they can’t get involved with our elections.”
A Chinese delegate shrugged when he heard Trump’s statement via translation in the General Assembly. China later denied Trump’s accusation.
“We do not and will not interfere in any countries’ domestic affairs,” said Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the United Nations. “We refuse to accept any unwarranted accusations against China, and we call on other countries to also observe the purposes of the U.N. charter and not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.”
U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump’s remark.
There is extensive evidence linking Russia to attempts to penetrate U.S. elections systems and to influence U.S. voters. But with the elections less than two months away, U.S. intelligence and election-protection officials have not cited any specific, credible Chinese efforts.
Officials say China’s cyber-espionage operations targeting U.S. defense and commerce have been formidable, however. And Trump’s claim comes amid an escalation of tensions between Washington and Beijing, spurred by their growing trade dispute.
Each imposed tariff increases on the other’s goods Monday, and Beijing accused the Trump administration of bullying. A Chinese official said China cannot hold talks on ending the trade dispute while the U.S. “holds a knife” to Beijing’s neck by imposing tariff hikes.
U.S. intelligence officials have said they are not now seeing the intensity of Russian intervention registered in 2016 and are also concerned about activity by China, Iran and North Korea. Trump’s statement caught lawmakers and some national security officials off guard as Beijing has not been singled out as the most worrisome foe.
Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins cybersecurity expert, said, “I am not aware of any evidence of Chinese interference in the midterm elections.” He said, “Chinese influence operations tend to be more subtle, less public, and business-related.”
China has been accused of interfering in an election before, although not in the United States. Cybersecurity firm Fire Eye released a report in July describing “active compromises of multiple Cambodia entities related to the country’s electoral system” including the National Election Commission, before the country’s July 29 general elections.
The hackers’ methods matched a Chinese-linked hacking group tied to multiple cyber operations that have breached U.S. defense contractors, universities and engineering and maritime technology development firms.
Trump also used his moment chairing the Security Council meeting about nuclear proliferation to issue a strong warning to nuclear-aspirant Iran, which he deemed the “world’s leading sponsor of terror” fueling “conflict around the region and far beyond.”
The president has withdrawn the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, accusing the country of destabilizing actions throughout the region and support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah. Tough sanctions are due to kick in against Tehran in November, and Trump warned that there would be “severe consequences” for any nation that defied them.
Despite his tough talk, Trump said he could envision relations with Iran moving along a similar “trajectory” as ones with North Korea. A year ago at the U.N., Trump belittled its leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and threatened to annihilate the country, but on Wednesday he touted the “the wonderful relationship” with Kim and teased that details of a second summit between the two men could be released soon.
He also condemned violence in the ongoing bloody civil war in Syria, saying that the “butchery is enabled by Russia and Iran.”
Trump also waded into thorny Middle East politics, endorsing the two-state solution to bring an end the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. A day after being greeted with laughter by world leaders still uncertain how to manage his “America First” ideology, Trump explicitly backed Israel, noted the moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and suggested that he saw progress on the horizon for Middle East peace.
“I like two-state solution,” Trump said in his most clear endorsement of the plan as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “That’s what I think works best.”
Trump indicated that moving the embassy was “a big chip” the U.S. delivered to the Israelis.
“I took probably the biggest chip off the table. And so obviously they have to start, you know, we have to make a fair deal. We have to do something. Deals have to be good for both parties.”
“Now that will also mean that Israel will have to do something that is good for the other side.”
The two-state “solution” is mostly aspirational. Ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinians over the division of territory, borders and governance has spawned violence going back years and long stymied Mideast peace efforts.
Moving the embassy from Tel Aviv triggered considerable protest from the Palestinians and expressions of condemnation from many American allies who worried about further violence that could destabilize the fragile region. Trump said that his administration’s peace plan, in part helmed by his son-in-law senior adviser Jared Kushner, would be released in the coming months.
Third Kavanaugh Accuser Submits Statement to Senate Panel
WASHINGTON—The Senate Judiciary Committee is reviewing allegations by a third woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, a panel spokesman said Wednesday, in yet another potential blow to his prospects for Senate confirmation.
As in the allegations by his two previous accusers, the latest incident is alleged to have occurred decades ago. In a three-page sworn declaration, Julie Swetnick of Washington, D.C., says she witnessed Kavanaugh “consistently engage in excessive drinking and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women in the early 1980s.” Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, posted the declaration on Twitter and provided it to the committee.
Kavanaugh denied her allegation as he has the others. Trump tweeted that Avenatti was a “third-rate lawyer” pushing “false accusations.”
The new development came a day before President Donald Trump’s nominee and his first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, are to testify to the Judiciary Committee in what looms as a critical moment in the 51-year-old conservative jurist’s quest to join the high court. As of now, Republicans controlling that panel have announced no plans to focus Thursday’s session on the claims of the two other women.
Kavanaugh released a statement denying the new charges.
“This is ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone. I don’t know who this is and this never happened,” Kavanaugh said.
The committee also released a two-page prepared statement from Kavanaugh for Thursday’s hearing in which he “categorically and unequivocably” denies Ford’s allegation. She has said he forced her into a room at a high school party, held her on a bed and tried removing her clothes as he muffled her mouth with his hands. Ford says she eventually escaped.
Kavanaugh’s written testimony for the committee went a bit further than the description of his youthful behavior he gave in a Fox News Channel interview Monday, when he said “people” may have drunk too much at high school parties.
“I drank beer with my friends, usually on weekends. Sometimes I had too many. In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now,” Kavanaugh said.
Swetnick also made other accusations in her statement. The AP has not been able to corroborate them, and continues to investigate.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Avenatti said he would not provide additional details about Swetnick’s allegation, saying they want to see an FBI investigation. He said they expect to release additional names and evidence in “coming weeks.”
Avenatti also represents Stormy Daniels, who alleges she was paid to keep a sexual relationship with Trump quiet. The publicity-friendly attorney has said he’s considering competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
ICE Deports African Man Who Escaped Ethnic Cleansing
In his native Mauritania, Seyni Malick Diagne was arrested and expelled to a refugee camp because of the color of his skin.
He fled to the United States in 2001 and settled in Columbus, Ohio, home to a growing community of black Mauritanians who escaped their country’s ethnic cleansing in the 1990s.
Diagne learned English and always had a job, his friends say, working at warehouses or clothing retailers. He volunteered on the weekends at a local mosque and taught children about their heritage.
Diagne, 64, is undocumented. His asylum claim was denied and an immigration judge issued a removal order in 2005. But he wasn’t a priority to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so the agency “permitted Diagne to remain free from custody to pursue legal remedies in his case,” a spokesman said.
That changed on June 13, when ICE arrested Diagne.
He is among dozens of Mauritanians who have been deported this year despite calls from human rights organizations asking the U.S. government to stop the removals. Advocates say black Mauritanians who were exiled decades ago aren’t considered citizens and face discrimination in a country that was the last in the world to abolish slavery in 1981.
Their deportations are a result of increased immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. ICE deported nearly 192,000 immigrants so far this fiscal year, a 9 percent increase over the same time period in 2017, according to federal figures released this month.
Diagne’s lawyers asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to stop his removal. Besides the risks awaiting him in Mauritania, he was also diagnosed with kidney cancer, according to court filings.
But the motion was denied. Hours before Diagne boarded a plane at Dulles International Airport on Aug. 22, his attorneys filed an emergency stay of removal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. It was too late: Diagne was deported that night.
“It was like hearing that somebody was going to die at any moment,” said Diagne’s lawyer, Julie Nemecek. “It is outrageous.”
***
The racial rift had existed for decades between the black and Arabic residents of Mauritania, located on the northwest coast of Africa. But the tension escalated in April 1989 when border disputes emerged between the Islamic nation and its southern neighbor, Senegal.
The government accused black citizens of being Senegalese and expelled tens of thousands into refugee camps, according to a 1994 report about the crisis by Human Rights Watch.
“In several villages and in the cities, security forces are reported to have tortured people for weeks before actually expelling them,” the report reads. “People were beaten after they had been handcuffed and had their feet tied together. Some were denied food for two or three days.”
Others were held in jails before they were taken to Senegal, their birth certificates and identification papers confiscated.
Among the detained was Diagne, a school teacher at the time, according to court records filed in his immigration case. He lived at a refugee camp in Senegal for six years.
In 1998, he returned to Mauritania and was “arrested, beaten, and tortured on two different occasions,” records state. Diagne came to the United States three years later and settled in Columbus, Ohio.
He doesn’t have immediate family in Columbus but built friendships with other west Africans in his community. His friends describe him as a quiet and religious man. Ahmed Tidiane met him In 2003 while they worked at a JCPenney distribution center. At the local mosque, they prayed together. In their conversations, Tidiane learned that Diagne had serious kidney problems.
But despite his poor health, he said, Diagne is “a hardworking person.”
“He was moving boxes, loading trucks,” Tidiane said. “Regardless of his failing health condition, he was very, very strong.”
***
During his first term, President Barack Obama directed ICE to focus deportation efforts on immigrants with serious criminal records. But that changed in January 2017, just days after Donald Trump was sworn into office. The new administration vastly expanded ICE’s discretion on arrests and removals.
The shift has been apparent within the Mauritanian community in Columbus. In 2017, only eight Mauritanians were deported, according to federal figures. As of Aug. 13, 81 have been removed, an ICE spokesman told Reveal.
The Atlantic recently visited their community of about 3,000 residents and spoke to Mauritanians who expect to be picked up by ICE and are putting their affairs in order. Human rights advocates have also warned the Trump administration of the challenges black Mauritanians face if they’re deported.
In a statement, Amnesty International asked the government to stop the deportations, citing the risk of enslavement. Estimates show that about 1 percent of the population, or roughly 43,000 people, are still enslaved.
Slavery abolitionist Biram Dah Abeid wrote in a declaration this summer that deporting Mauritanians “amounts to a death sentence for an entire population.” Several deportees, he added, have been arrested soon after arriving in Africa. Abeid was arrested himself in August by the Mauritanian government for his political speech, his supporters say.
Another challenge faced by deportees: Mauritanians who weren’t in the country in 2011 during a national census don’t have identification records.
“You would be hard pressed to obtain a passport, to obtain government services to which you might otherwise be entitled to,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. Finding a job would also be difficult, he added, “especially in any public sector.”
***
When ICE arrested Diagne, he told the agency about his cancer, according to court records. He also told ICE about his Hepatitis B and failing vision.
But his lawyers say that Diagne did not receive medical attention while in detention. ICE didn’t answer Reveal’s questions about Diagne’s medical care. A spokesman said the agency “is committed to ensuring the health, safety, and welfare of all those in our care.”
“In accordance with ICE’s rigorous performance-based national detention standards,” he added, “the agency ensures continuity of care from admission to transfer, discharge, or removal.”
Diagne’s Aug. 22 flight had a stop in Morocco. One of his friends, Hamidou Sy, spoke to Diagne recently. This is what Diagne told him: after arriving in Mauritania, officers booked Diagne into a jail, where he lived in a cell with more than 70 men who were forced to urinate into plastic bottles and were beaten by guards.
After 13 days in jail, Diagne told Sy he bribed officials with about $1,500. He was released and a relative took him to Senegal.
“Everybody was worried,” Sy said. “Oh my God, what was going on?”
Robert Reich: Trump Has Betrayed His Working-Class Supporters
Start with his new tax law–one of the very few laws he actually got through the Republican Congress. Trump said it would likely give every American worker a wage increase of $4,000, but the typical worker’s wages have gone nowhere, which is one reason Republicans have stopped campaigning on the tax law.
Now, Trump wants to use executive action to cut taxes on the rich by an additional $100 billion.
If that weren’t enough, Trump has cut the pay of average workers. His Labor Department repealed overtime protections, at an estimated cost to workers of $1.2 billion in lost wages each year.
Trump and the Republican Congress repealed a rule that required federal contractors with long histories of wage theft, safety violations, and employment discrimination to mend their ways in order to receive any new federal contracts. Now, they can continue to get federal contracts and still shaft their workers.
Trump has also considered cutting back child labor protections in hazardous jobs. His other regulatory rollbacks would expose working families to pollutants in drinking water and reverse decades of work to finally ban asbestos.
Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, has even argued that the government has no authority to protect the health and safety of workers in sports and entertainment, even though the government has long regulated safety in the entertainment industry.
Oh, and remember Trump’s promise to replace the Affordable Care Act with something better? Well, you can forget that one, too. Instead, Trump has done everything he can to undercut the Act, resulting in an anticipated near 20% increase in health insurance premiums, and the biggest burden falling on working families who earn too much to be eligible for subsidies.
As a result of Trump’s undermining of the Affordable Care Act, the number of Americans without health insurance rose by more than 3 million in 2017, after years of declines following the implementation of the Act.
Trump’s most recent budget proposal skewers working people with a proposed $763 billion cut in Medicaid and other health programs, $494 billion of cuts in Medicare, and major cuts in education and nutrition over the next 10 years.
Trump has betrayed the working class – but he still claims he’s on their side. That’s one of his biggest lies of all.
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