Chris Hedges's Blog, page 478

The Unholy Alliance Among Trump, Kavanaugh and the Evangelicals

Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is a gift to evangelical Christians. It was their ardent hope the president would pick a justice friendly to their cause that drove many evangelicals to vote for Trump in the first place. As Ed Stetzer, writing in Christianity Today, put it: “It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.” Stetzer’s piece was published in early 2017 after Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the position Republicans had blocked President Barack Obama from filling with his own nominee. Stetzer wrote, “Simply put, the Supreme Court is the reason that many Evangelicals voted for Trump.” By swallowing their moral standards and voting for a president who violates so many evangelical sensibilities, religious conservatives may achieve—if Kavanaugh is confirmed—a 5-4 hard-right majority on the court for decades.

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s son) posted to his Facebook page a month before the 2016 election: “The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court. That impacts everything.” Appearing critical of both major party presidential nominees, he added, “There’s no question, Trump and [Hillary] Clinton scandals might be news for the moment, but who they appoint to the Supreme Court will remake the fabric of our society for our children and our grandchildren, for generations to come.”

In an interview on NPR, another evangelical American, Karen Swallow Prior of Liberty University, concurred with Graham as she explained how easy it was for Christian conservatives to become Trump’s bedfellows in order to make long-term gains on the Supreme Court. Even though she hopes for “better candidates” than Trump in the future, she was confident Kavanaugh “would uphold the dignity of human life—of all human life.” And that apparently has made tolerating the Trump presidency worth it.

Trump won 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. This was a higher percentage than the last three Republican presidential nominees—Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush—despite the fact Trump was the least likely to embody the actual values this demographic claims to uphold. But knowing their political support would be crucial to his election, Trump courted evangelicals ahead of the election, emphasizing he would have the power as president to appoint at least one Supreme Court justice. With the ill-timed retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, evangelicals who backed Trump are being granted a two-for-one deal. Their compromise with the devil is paying off.

As if to seal the deal, Trump hosted about 100 evangelical leaders at a White House dinner a week before the Kavanaugh hearings began. At the event,  he boasted about ending “attacks on communities of faith” before expressing his quid pro quo requirement: “I just ask you to go out and make sure all of your people vote.” He left nothing to chance as he equated his presidency with their religion and used the White House to campaign for re-election, saying, “This November 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion.” He then conjured up visions of violence, using his favorite tactic of fear as political tool, just in case those present were not entirely convinced of the need to vote for him:

[The opposition] will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence. When you look at antifa—these are violent people.

A week after that dinner, Trump’s pre-election gift to evangelicals commenced with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in the Senate. On the second day of those hearings, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., questioned Kavanaugh about a specific abortion case on which he had dissented. Abortion is arguably the single most important issue for evangelicals, and Kavanaugh’s dissent in the case of a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant who wanted to obtain an abortion is a critical part of his judicial record. Kavanaugh asserted in the case of Garza v. Hargan the young woman in question would have to find an immigration sponsor (considered to be a guardian such as a relative or friend) before being allowed to have an abortion. In his dissenting opinion, he wrote the majority was trying to create “a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.” The phrase “abortion on demand” is favored by anti-choice factions. At his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh obscured his position, saying, “I did my best to follow precedent.”

If evangelicals used Trump to get an anti-choice Supreme Court justice, and Trump used evangelicals to get elected, it may be that Kavanaugh is also happy to use Trump to get his position on the court. When Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., questioned Kavanaugh about Trump’s claim he had the absolute right to pardon himself, Kavanaugh sidestepped the issue, saying, “It’s a hypothetical question that I can’t begin to answer in this context.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal then asked Kavanaugh if he would recuse himself from any cases involving President Trump that reached the Supreme Court, but Kavanaugh refused to answer, claiming he didn’t want to pre-judge a case and adding, “I need to be careful.” Of course, Kavanaugh is treading carefully as he attempts to portray himself as a reliably conservative judge who will be driven by ideology and as someone who can be counted on to absolve the president should the opportunity arise.

Not all conservative Christians have compromised their morality for political gain. In a New York Times op-ed, Baptist minister Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove laid out “The Evangelical Case Against Judge Kavanaugh.” In it, Wilson-Hartgrove said he and others like him find Kavanaugh’s nomination to be “a threat to the Christian ethic we are called to preach and pursue in public life.” He cited a group of evangelical women who are rethinking their positions on abortion by considering tackling poverty as a more effective means of fulfilling their pro-life agenda. He illustrated the growing divide between white evangelicals and non-white Christians, saying the “issues that matter most are voting rights, living wages, environmental protection, access to health care and public education,” and he accused “reactionary conservatives” of having “hijacked our faith to serve their narrow interests.”

American secularists are also angry about the stranglehold that evangelical conservatives have had on government. The organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) has filed a complaint saying Trump’s evangelical advisory board—which was honored at the aforementioned White House dinner—violates federal rules. In a letter to White House officials and the head of the board, the organization said, “It is clear that the President’s Evangelical Advisory Board is doing substantive work with the Trump administration behind closed doors—without any sunlight for the public to understand how and why decisions are being made.”

It is past time for the U.S. government to be wrested out of the stranglehold of evangelical conservatives. The rights of women and the LGBTQ community especially cannot be held hostage to the retrograde visions of this politically powerful faction.

Michael Moore: Trump Is a Symptom, Not the Disease

With the premiere of his latest documentary film, “Fahrenheit 11/9,” receiving a standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, filmmaker and activist Michael Moore issued a plea to audiences to come away from the movie with an understanding that simply removing President Donald Trump from office won’t do away with the circumstances which led to him being there.

“Donald J. Trump did not just fall from the sky,” wrote Moore in a statement on his website. “His rise to the presidency was not an aberration and should not have come as a shock.”

The feature-length documentary will be released in theaters nationwide on September 21, with the message, as Sophia McClennen wrote at Salon, that Trump is “the symptom” of deep dysfunction within U.S. democracy—”not the disease.”

Notably, that very same message was echoed by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, in a speech on Friday in Illinois.

The nation’s current crisis “did not start with Donald Trump,” Obama said. “He is a symptom, not the cause.”

The film examines some of the undercurrents of American culture which Moore has explored in his previous films: the unchecked corporate greed which has led to the decimation of whole communities and the 2008 financial meltdown, the subject of his films “Roger and Me” and “Capitalism: A Love Story”; the immense power of private interest groups like the NRA and for-profit health insurance companies, as he explored in “Bowling for Columbine” and “Sicko.”

All those dynamics helped to set the scene for November 9, 2016, when Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States.

“This is not a film telling you what a jerk Donald Trump is or what an [sic] buffoon Donald Trump is or what a liar Donald Trump is. You already know all that,” wrote Moore. “[Trump’s 2016 win] was the logical end result of a long, downward spiral in America that culminated in one of our most loathsome citizens conquering our most powerful office. One of our most deceptive minds, commanding the bully pulpit. One of our most fraudulent hucksters, armed with the powers of the presidency to protect him.”

In addition to Trump, Moore takes aim at Obama for his administration’s insufficient response to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as Democratic establishment leaders including Nancy Pelosi and the Clintons for driving the party to become increasingly beholden to corporate interests while ignoring the needs of working class families and the common good.

You could feel the crowd squirm when Michael Moore turned on Obama and Pelosi: FAHRENHEIT 11/9 is an equal opportunity offender. It has rage to spare, but also a sense of old-school solidarity. #TIFF18

— Joshua Rothkopf (@joshrothkopf) September 7, 2018

As McClennen writes, Moore uses the Flint water crisis as a microcosm representing how politicians like Gov. Rick Snyder (R-Mich.), who made the decision to switch the city’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River to save money, have come to willfully ignore the humanity of their constituents:

Moore makes the case that the story of Flint is not one of isolated corruption and greed; it is a story of a nation that has allowed this sort of criminal behavior to be more than acceptable, but routine…Moore works hard to drive home the point that the story of Flint is not an isolated incident or a tragic accident, but proof of the triumph of corporate capitalism over democratic ideals.

The film was well-received by the premiere audience.

Michael Moore just got a standing ovation after the world premiere of Fahrenheit 11/9 at #TIFF18 #Toronto #TIFF pic.twitter.com/sA0dNP30Eb

— blogTO (@blogTO) September 7, 2018

“This film is the moment of truth we’ve all needed for some time,” Moore wrote on his website, “and I believe its release in theaters nationwide on September 21 may well be the real beginning of the end for Donald J Trump (and perhaps, more importantly, the eventual end of the rotten, corrupt system that gave us Trump in the first place).”

“It’s a story about hope—and what false hope has done to us. It’s a story about deception and betrayal,” he continued. “It’s a story about what happens to a nation when it hits rock bottom. It’s the story about who we are as a people and what it means to be an American in the era of Trump.”

High-Stakes Diplomacy as Battle for Syria’s Idlib Looms

TEHRAN, Iran—Iran and Russia on Friday backed a military campaign to retake the last rebel-held stronghold in Syria as Turkey pleaded for a cease-fire, narrowing the chances of a diplomatic solution to avoid what many say would be a bloody humanitarian disaster.

The trilateral summit in Tehran involving Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan puts further pressure on the rebel forces still operating in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, including about 10,000 hard-core jihadists and al-Qaida-linked fighters.

It left the chance, however slim, for further diplomacy to try to separate civilians and rebels from the Islamic militants in Idlib.

While Putin called for the “total annihilation of terrorists in Syria,” he left open the possibility of a cease-fire. Rouhani as well spoke of “cleansing the Idlib region of terrorists,” while also noting the need of protecting civilians.

Turkey, which backed opposition forces against Syrian President Bashar Assad, fears a military offensive will touch off a flood of refugees and destabilize areas it now holds in Syria. Ankara also has hundreds of troops manning 12 observation posts in Idlib.

“Idlib isn’t just important for Syria’s future; it is of importance for our national security and for the future of the region,” Erdogan said. “Any attack on Idlib would result in a catastrophe. Any fight against terrorists requires methods based on time and patience. We don’t want Idlib to turn into a bloodbath.”

Erdogan also sought to use Persian literature to drive home his point in Tehran, quoting the poet Saadi: “If you’ve no sympathy for human pain, the name of a human you cannot retain.”

The U.S. also warned against an assault in Idlib, with Ambassador Nikki Haley telling the U.N. Security Council that “the consequences will be dire.”

Northwestern Idlib province and surrounding areas are home to about 3 million people — nearly half of them civilians displaced from other parts of Syria.

For Russia and Iran, both allies of the Syrian government, retaking Idlib is crucial to complete what they see as a military victory in Syria’s civil war after Syrian troops recaptured nearly all other major towns and cities, largely defeating the rebellion against Assad.

A bloody offensive that creates a massive wave of death and displacement, however, runs counter to their narrative that the situation in Syria is normalizing, and could hurt Russia’s longer-term efforts to encourage the return of refugees and get Western countries to invest in Syria’s postwar reconstruction. Russia also wants to maintain its regional presence to fill the vacuum left by the U.S. and its long uncertainty over what it wants in the conflict.

“We think it’s unacceptable when (someone) is trying to shield the terrorists under the pretext of protecting civilians as well as causing damage to Syrian government troops,” Putin said. “As far as we can see, this is also the goal of the attempts to stage chemical weapons incidents by Syrian authorities. We have irrefutable evidence that militants are preparing such operations, such provocations.”

Putin offered no evidence to back his claim. The U.N. and Western countries have blamed Assad’s forces for chemical weapons attacks in the civil war, something denied by Russia and Syria. The U.S., Britain and France have vowed to take action against any further chemical attacks by Assad’s regime.

Reacting to Erdogan’s proposal for a cease-fire in Idlib, Putin said “a cease-fire would be good” but indicated that Moscow does not think it will hold.

“We hope that we will be able to reach an agreement and that our call for reconciliation in the Idlib area will be heard,” the Russian president said. “We hope that the representatives of those terrorist organizations will be smart enough to stop the resistance and lay down arms.”

There was no immediate reaction from fighters in Idlib. Naji al-Mustafa, a spokesman for the Turkey-backed National Front for Liberation, said before the summit that his forces were prepared for a battle that they expect will lead to a major humanitarian crisis.

“Idlib is about a lot of international power play and everyone is looking after their interests,” al-Mustafa said.

Early Friday, a series of airstrikes hit villages in southwest Idlib, targeting insurgent posts and killing five people, including a civilian, said Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Abdurrahman said suspected Russian warplanes carried out the attack.

Faysal al-Antar, a member of the local council in Kfar Zita, one of the towns on the southern edge of Idlib that was hit in the airstrikes, said warplanes were flying as the leaders convened Friday in Tehran.

“The meetings never translate on the ground,” he said. “Imagine there is a meeting to calm the situation, while we are being hit, and there are airstrikes as it takes place. If they had the slightest respect, they would have at least halted the strikes for the duration of the meeting.”

Already, nearly a half-million people have been killed in the grinding civil war, which began first as a popular uprising against Assad and later devolved into a sectarian and regional conflict.

Eight aid agencies warned that in the coming offensive “it will be the most vulnerable who will pay the heaviest price, with women, children, and the elderly in Idlib unlikely to be able to move to safety.”

But Hassan Hassan, a Syria expert and a fellow at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said he is doubtful an offensive is imminent, pointing to Turkey getting U.S. backing in opposing a major offensive.

“The regime might conduct a face-saving attack on areas away from Turkey’s zones of operation, a low-hanging fruit,” he said. “I say this because the US is making it clear it is not bluffing this time, and Turkey is similarly against the offensive.”

In her remarks at the U.N. Security Council, Haley said the U.S. has been clear with Russia and other nations that “we consider any assault on Idlib to be a dangerous escalation of the conflict in Syria.”

“If Assad, Russia and Iran continue, the consequences will be dire,” she said.

“We urge Russia to consider its options carefully. Stop Assad’s assault on Idlib. Work with us and the U.N. to find peace at last for Syria,” she said.

The U.S. has found itself largely on the sidelines of the possible offensive as Iran, Russia and Turkey — all nations that Washington has imposed sanctions upon — discuss Idlib’s future. Although the U.S. has about 2,000 troops and outposts in Syria, President Donald Trump has said he wants to pull those forces out after the war against the Islamic State group dislodged the extremists from vast territories it once held there and in Iraq.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Zeina Karam and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut; Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed.

President Calls Russia Probe ‘Unfair for Our Midterms’

FARGO, N.D.—President Donald Trump said Friday that the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential is not only bad for the country, “it’s really unfair for our midterms.”

Trump also said special counsel Robert Mueller should have wrapped up the inquiry a “long time ago.”

Asked about the investigation, which he has repeatedly denounced as a “witch hunt,” Trump reiterated to reporters that there was no collusion between anyone one his presidential campaign and the Russian government.

But he said the time had long past for the investigation to have ended.

“We have to get it over with. It’s really bad for the country. It’s really unfair for our midterms. Really, really unfair for the midterms,” Trump said. “This thing should have been over with a long time ago.”

The president addressed reporters in the midst of a two-day campaign swing through states where Republicans hope to expand their narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate by knocking off vulnerable Democrats from Montana and North Dakota.

Trump was flying from Billings, Montana to Fargo, North Dakota, for fundraising events when he visited the press cabin aboard Air Force One to address reporters accompanying him on the trip, part of an intense schedule of campaigning that Trump plans through the Nov. 6 elections.

Asked if he would consider allowing a government shutdown before the November elections, Trump said, “I would do it because I think it’s a great political issue.” But he said some Republican lawmakers would “rather not do it because they have races, they’re doing well, they’re up.”

The president told Fox News in an interview broadcast earlier Friday that a government shutdown “is up to me, but I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt us or potentially hurt us because I have a feeling that the Republicans are going to do very well.”

At a rally Thursday in Billings, Montana, Trump urged the defeat of Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, a top GOP target in the fall elections. He is expected to do the same against Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota during Friday’s appearance in Fargo.

As he stood alongside Tester’s opponent, state Auditor Matt Rosendale, Trump said Tester “will never drain the swamp because he happens to live in the swamp.” He also criticized Tester for voting against Republican tax cuts.

Trump praised Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s progress toward confirmation to the Supreme Court but decried the “anger and the meanness on the other side” and the Democrats’ “sick” behavior as he sought to turn Kavanaugh’s confirmation into a political litmus test for voters.

Democrats sought to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings from going forward.

“It’s embarrassing to watch those people make fools of themselves as they scream and shout at this great gentleman,” Trump said.

The president’s strategy on the Supreme Court nomination aims to turn the screws on Tester and Heitkamp. Both red-state Democrats find themselves caught between their Senate leaders and their states’ more conservative voters, who are more broadly supportive of Trump’s pick.

Neither senator has laid down clear markers on how they will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination, which Senate Republican leaders hope to bring to a floor vote later this month — just weeks before the election.

Tester opposed Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Heitkamp voted for to confirm him.

White House officials contend the Supreme Court was a powerful motivator for Republican base voters in 2016, when Trump won the White House, and they’re seeking to capitalize on Kavanaugh’s nomination to help overcome an enthusiasm gap with Democrats. Likewise, a vote for Kavanaugh by either Tester or Heitkamp could frustrate a Democratic base eager for a more confrontational approach to the Trump administration.

Democrats question whether the Kavanaugh vote will resonate in the race to unseat Tester. He has emphasized his independence and willingness to cross the aisle to work with Trump, who carried Montana by 20 percentage points two years ago.

Likewise, Heitkamp is locked in a tough re-election fight in heavily Republican North Dakota, where she narrowly won six years ago and now faces a more formidable opponent in Rep. Kevin Cramer. Cramer has been a fervent supporter of Trump, who remains popular in North Dakota.

___

Superville reported from Washington. Associated Press writers James MacPherson in Bismarck, North Dakota; Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana; and Catherine Lucey and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

Tesla Stock Dips as CEO Appears to Smoke Pot on Video

Shares of electric car maker Tesla Inc. fell more than 6 percent early Friday after the CEO appeared to smoke marijuana during an interview and the company’s accounting chief left after a month on the job.

CEO Elon Musk appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” overnight. About two hours into the podcast, which can be seen on YouTube, Musk inhales from what the host says is a combined marijuana-tobacco joint, which Rogan notes is legal. Rogan passes the joint to Musk, who also takes a sip of whiskey.

Shortly after smoking, Musk looks at his phone and laughs, telling Rogan he was getting texts from friends asking why he was smoking weed during the interview. Later Musk says he doesn’t notice any effect from the joint, which he claims he rarely smokes.

As the video gained traction, more news hit: Early Friday, the Palo Alto, Calif., company announced that Chief Accounting Officer Dave Morton resigned after a month on the job, citing public attention and the fast pace of the post.

The company disclosed the departure in a regulatory filing.

“Since I joined Tesla on August 6th, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations,” the company quoted Morton as saying in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “As a result, this caused me to reconsider my future. I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla’s leadership or its financial reporting,” Morton was quoted as saying.

Tesla is under extreme pressure to turn a sustained net profit starting this quarter, as promised by Musk. But in the second quarter it burned through $739.5 million in cash and lost a quarterly record $717.5 million.

Musk has said the company is producing more than 5,000 Model 3 electric cars per week, and cash generated from the sales will bring sustained quarterly profits. The Model 3 starts at $35,000, although the cheapest one that can be purchased at present costs $49,000.

Moody’s Investor Service downgraded Tesla’s debt into junk territory back in March, warning that Tesla won’t have cash to cover $3.7 billion for normal operations, capital expenses and debt that comes due early next year. Tesla said cash from Model 3 sales will pay the bills and drive profits.

The company said its accounting functions will be overseen by the chief financial officer and corporate controller. Morton’s resignation is effective immediately.

Giuliani: Trump Won’t Answer Questions on Obstruction of Justice

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president’s attorneys told The Associated Press.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.”

Giuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians. It signals the Trump’s lawyers are committed to protecting the president from answering questions about actions the president took in office.

Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs on His ‘Calling’ to Turn His Hometown Around

At just 27, Michael Tubbs is Stockton, California’s, first African-American mayor and the youngest mayor in American history of a city of more than 100,000 people. Tubbs, who was previously on the Stockton City Council, says he plans to use his position to reduce violent crime, foster economic development and improve public education.

Not infrequently, the news coverage about Stockton, a Central Valley city of 300,000 east of San Francisco, is negative. In 2012, Stockton’s foreclosure rate was the highest in the country; it also became the largest city in the country to go bankrupt. But now Stockton is making headlines for being the first city in the country to pilot a universal basic income program, which Tubbs coordinated. It’s funded by a million-dollar private grant from a tech group called the Economic Security Project, co-chaired by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. According to the terms of the grant, several dozen Stockton families are to get $500 a month, no strings attached, with the goal of gathering data on the economic and social effects of giving people a basic income.

Tubbs is putting his own experiences to work in his home city. He was raised in Stockton by a single mother, who had him when she was a teenager; his father was incarcerated. His own path has been different: Tubbs graduated with honors from Stanford University and interned in the White House and at Google.

His quick rise has drawn notice outside of strictly political circles, and outside Stockton city limits. Oprah Winfrey donated $10,000 to his campaign. In 2017, he was included on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, and The Root has named him one of the 100 most influential African-Americans.

Tubbs talked to Truthdig about how having a hardworking mother without higher education and an incarcerated father shaped his policies, how getting out of Stockton was a measure of success when he was growing up—and how a cousin’s murder prompted him to come back.

Emily Wilson: What is the biggest challenge about being mayor?

Michael Tubbs: I think the challenges are twofold—number one, this is a city of so many people with so many needs and there’s so much to do, and it’s difficult to find a way to effectively communicate policy to residents. The second thing is probably just the emotional personal toll being an elected official can take, but luckily my time on the City Council gave me some preparation.

EW: Did your working at Google and the White House help prepare you for this job?

MT: Oh, absolutely. The White House showed me how much leadership matters, and Google really showed me how corporations and business people think and work.

EW: People have strong reactions to the idea of basic income. What have been some of the responses you’ve gotten?

MT: What I’ve been fascinated by is the amount of positive response we’ve gotten from people, and I’ve been surprised by how much people are really hurting and really need opportunities. I’ve also been fascinated with how I thought it was a really novel discussion, but people seem to be ready for it.

How we came to it was I learned about it in college by studying Dr. King and given the fact that one in two Californians can’t afford a $400 emergency, and we have one the fastest-rising rent markets in the country in Stockton, signified for me we have to be bold around articulating and experimenting with solutions that help people. So we met with the Economic Security Project, and they were looking for a city to do basic income with. They said, “Have you heard of this?” and I said, “Oh, yeah, Dr. King was talking about it.” I come at it from a social-justice, here-and-now perspective, and we decided to partner together.

In terms of where it’s at, we just hired a project director who is working with the community now around eligibility and selection criteria. It’ll be people making $50,000 and below, but they’re still hammering out those details. Our goal to start is this fall or early next year.

EW: What are other projects you’re excited about that maybe haven’t gotten so much attention because this has gotten a lot?

MT: We have a progressive general plan that calls for infill development on the housing front. We just approved a fee reduction for people who want to build affordable housing. We allocated a bunch of dollars from our general fund around homelessness to do more housing for really low-income people. The Stockton Scholars program, our scholarship program that will make California State University tuition essentially free for the vast majority of Stockton Unified students, is the thing I’m most excited about.

EW: What do you want people to know about Stockton that they don’t know?

MT: Stockton is the all-American city. It’s diverse. It’s a major city with a small-town vibe. It’s a place where you can really contribute in a big way.

EW: What do people most want to see in Stockton?

MT: Opportunity. Jobs and safety and better schools.

EW: Why did you want to get out of Stockton? Why did you come back?

MT: I grew up in some of rougher parts of town, so success was always defined as leaving Stockton. That was a marker for the family or the community. If you were still here, it was like, oh, what did you do wrong?

I had no intention of coming back to Stockton. I really wanted to go to the East Coast for school. That’s where I knew I was going—as far away from Stockton as possible. I was going to go to Columbia, but it was too big and right in New York City. I know me, and I knew it would be hard to focus on academics there, so I went to Stanford because there’s not a lot to do in Palo Alto.

I came back precisely because my cousin was murdered in Stockton while I was interning at the White House. And that was a jarring moment that made me think about what role I wanted to play in the world, and also what was the point of being individually successful if the people I loved and cared about were still struggling, and that was a turning point for me. My family thought I was crazy. I’m a spiritual person, and I felt it was almost like a calling, or something I had to do. It was very purposeful.

I came back to run for City Council. I spent time researching and talking with community activists, and I realized the most effective way I could directly impact the issue of violence was to run for City Council. The idea was it was such a long-shot campaign that even if I lost I could spur a conversation about it, but then I ended up winning.

EW: Why do you think you did win?

MT: We ran a really good campaign. I think a lot of people had lost hope, and I think they thought, “Oh, my kid could be like this kid who went to Stanford,” and that gave people hope. And the Oprah donation didn’t hurt, for sure.

EW: As a senior in high school, you wrote an essay that won a contest sponsored by writer Alice Walker about how your parents’ mistakes helped you succeed. What did you learn from your parents?

MT: I think seeing how hard my mother worked to get promotions and provide for her children as a single parent, and how she had some career progression issues—not because she couldn’t do the job, but because she didn’t have the education. Growing up and seeing that motivated me to pursue my own higher education and also illustrated for me the importance of people having opportunities. That reflects in a lot of my policies whether it’s basic income or Stockton Scholars.

I think having a father who’s incarcerated has given me a path for criminal justice reform and also to help folks when they’re coming back to reintegrate into society, so after their debt is paid, they’re not continually paying a debt.

Brazilian Presidential Candidate Stabbed, Undergoes Surgery

RIO DE JANEIRO — Jair Bolsonaro, a leading Brazilian presidential candidate whose heated rhetoric has electrified some voters and angered others in a deeply polarized electorate, was stabbed during a campaign event Thursday and was undergoing surgery.

Officials and his son said the far-right candidate was in stable condition, though the son also said Bolsonaro suffered severe blood loss and arrived to the hospital “almost dead.”

Numerous videos on social media showed Bolsonaro, who has promised to crack down on crime in Latin America’s largest nation, being stabbed with a knife to the lower part of his stomach. At the moment of the attack, Bolsonaro was on the shoulders of a supporter, looking out at the crowd and giving a thumbs up with his left hand.

After the attack, he is seen flinching and then goes out of view. Other videos show supporters carrying him to a car and hitting a man who was apparently the attacker.

Police spokesman Flavio Santiago confirmed to The Associated Press that his attacker had been arrested.

Bolsonaro was taken to a hospital in the city he was campaigning, Juiz de Fora, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of Rio de Janeiro, and was in good condition, Santiago said.

Santiago said the attacker was identified as Adelio Bispo de Oliveira. He said the suspect was beaten badly by Bolsonaro supporters after the attack. The man was arrested in 2013 for another assault, police said.

Luis Boudens, president of the National Federation of Federal Police, told the AP that the assailant appeared to be deranged.

“Our agents there said the attacker was ‘on a mission from God,'” Boudens said. “Their impression is that they were not dealing with a mentally stable person. He didn’t expect to be arrested so quickly, agents reacted in seconds.”

In a statement, the hospital said Bolsonaro was in surgery but did not elaborate.

Bolsonaro’s son, Flavio Bolsonaro, initially posted on Twitter that the injury was superficial and his father was fine. However, an hour later he posted another tweet saying the wound was “worse than we thought.”

Flavio said the puncture had hit parts of his father’s liver, lung and intestines and he lost a lot of blood.

He arrived at the hospital “almost dead,” Flavio wrote. “His condition now seems stabilized. Please pray.”

A statement from federal police said the candidate had bodyguards. In the videos, Bolsonaro does not appear to be wearing a protective vest. Such measures are rare for candidates in Brazil.

“This episode is sad,” President Michel Temer told reporters in Brasilia. “We won’t have a rule of law if we have intolerance.”

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, is second in the polls to jailed ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has been barred from running but continues to appeal.

Despite being a congressman since 1991, Bolsonaro is running as an outsider ready to upend the establishment by cracking down on corruption in politics and reducing crime, in part by giving police a more free hand to shoot and kill while on duty.

While Bolsonaro has a strong following, he is also a deeply polarizing figure. He has been fined, and even faced charges, for derogatory statements toward women, blacks and gays.

He speaks nostalgically about the country’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship and has promised to fill his government with current and former military leaders. His vice presidential running mate is a retired general.

Earlier this week, Bolsonaro said during a campaign event that he would like to shoot corrupt members of the leftist Workers’ Party, which made da Silva its candidate. The comment prompted an immediate rebuke from the attorney general, who asked Bolsonaro to explain that comment.

In a sign of how polarized Brazilian politics has become, people took to Twitter Thursday night to either to decry the stabbing and ask for prayers for Bolsonaro or to say that the candidate had brought it upon himself and even may have staged it.

The top five trending topics in Brazil were related to the stabbing, and someone even created an account for the knife, whose tweets had been retweeted thousands of times just hours after the attack.

Other presidential candidates quickly denounced the stabbing.

“Politics is done through dialogue and by convincing, never with hate,” tweeted Gerado Alckmin, former governor of Sao Paulo who has focused negative ads on Bolsonaro.

Fernando Haddad, who is expected to take da Silva’s place on the Workers’ Party ticket, called the attack “absurd and regrettable.”

The attack comes at a time of increasingly heated rhetoric, and sometimes violence, related to campaigns and candidates.

In March, while da Silva was on a campaign tour in southern Brazil before his imprisonment, gunshots hit buses in his caravan. No one was hurt, and da Silva, who is in jail on a corruption conviction, was not in the vehicles that were hit.

Also in March, Marielle Franco, a black councilwoman in Rio de Janeiro, was shot to death along with her driver after attending an event on empowering black women.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the attack on Bolsonaro might reshape a presidential race very much up in the air with the front-runner, da Silva, in jail. In many ways, the incident feeds Bolsonaro’s narrative that Brazil is in chaos and needs a strong hand to steady it.

“It’s likely that Bolsonaro will use the attack to argue his opponents are desperate, that they had no other way to stop him,” said Mauricio Santoro, a political science professor at Rio de Janeiro’s state university.

___

Associated Press writers Marcelo Silva de Sousa in Rio de Janeiro and Sarah DiLorenzo in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna’s Stop BEZOS Act Aims to Get Billionaires Off ‘Corporate Welfare’

The only welfare problem in America is corporate welfare, say Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., in a Time op-ed published Thursday. The biggest welfare recipients, they write, are not the hardworking Americans who need it most, but “the billionaire owners of some of the most profitable corporations in our country.”

The two have co-authored legislation, the Stop BEZOS Act—the name is a jab at Amazon owner Jeff Bezos that stands for Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies—to reverse decades of this practice.

Bezos, the newly minted “wealthiest person on earth,” pays Amazon workers wages so low they must rely on food stamps and other government benefits to get by.

“In effect,” Sanders and Khanna write, “the middle-class taxpayers of this country are subsidizing the low wages paid by the richest person on Earth. That’s nuts.”

Walmart too, is guilty of low-wage practices, as are airlines and most of America’s major fast-food companies. Sanders and Khanna explain:

While the co-owner of Burger King, Jorge Paulo Lemann, has a net worth of about $25 billion, low wages at this fast-food chain cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $356 million a year. And it’s not just Burger King. McDonald’s workers are actually encouraged to sign up for government assistance—meaning the company fully acknowledges that it pays its employees wages that are non-livable.

If American workers were paid a living wage, the two lawmakers continue, “taxpayers would save about $150 billion a year on federal assistance programs and millions of workers would be able to live in dignity and security.”

To encourage this change, Sanders and Khanna’s proposed legislation aims to end “corporate welfare” for billionaires. The choice is simple, they write: “Pay workers a living wage or pay for the public assistance programs their low-wage employees are forced to depend upon.”

“Specifically,” they continue, “this legislation would establish a 100% tax on corporations with 500 or more employees equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers.” In practice, this means, “if a worker at Amazon receives $2,000 in food stamps, the employer would be taxed $2,000 to cover that cost.”

The goal is to create an economy that works for everyone—not just the Jeff Bezoses of the world. Read the entire article here.

Twitter Permanently Bans Alex Jones and Infowars, Citing Abuse

NEW YORK — Twitter permanently banned right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars show for abusive behavior — a day after CEO Jack Dorsey testified before Congress about alleged “conservative bias” on the platform.

The company said Jones won’t be able to create new accounts on Twitter or take over any existing ones. In a tweet, it said it would continue to monitor reports about other accounts potentially associated with Jones or Infowars, and will “take action” if it finds any attempts to circumvent the ban.

Twitter said Jones posted a video on Wednesday that violates the company’s policy against “abusive behavior.” That video showed Jones berating CNN journalist Oliver Darcy for some 10 minutes in between two congressional hearings on social media. Dorsey testified at both hearings, but did not appear to witness the confrontation.

Jones had about 900,000 followers on Twitter. Infowars had about 430,000. Jones did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twitter had previously suspended Jones for a week. But until now it had resisted muzzling Jones further. Other tech companies have limited Jones by suspending him for longer periods, as Facebook did, and by taking down his pages and radio stations.

Jones heckled Darcy in a Capitol Hill hallway where reporters were waiting to enter the House committee room. He criticized the journalist’s reporting and appearance, referencing his “skinny jeans” and repeatedly saying, “just look at this guy’s eyes” and “look at that smile.”

At one point, he said Darcy was “smiling like a possum that crawled out of the rear end of a dead cow. That’s what you look like. You look like a possum that got caught doing some really nasty stuff — in my view. You’re a public figure too.”

Darcy has aggressively questioned social media companies about the forbearance they showed Jones, asking why they have allowed him to remain on their platforms for as long as they have.

Jones is currently active on Facebook; his personal suspension there recently expired. Apple, YouTube and Spotify also permanently removed material Jones had published. Facebook did not immediately respond to a message asking whether it would also ban Jones.

Dorsey originally defended his company’s decision not to ban Jones, tweeting that Jones “hasn’t violated our rules” but if he does “we’ll enforce.”

“We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories,” Dorsey tweeted on Aug. 7 , after the other companies took action against Jones.

But a week later Twitter joined the other tech companies in muzzling Jones, even if it was only for a week. It was a significant move for a company one of its executives once called the “free speech wing of the free speech party.”

But critics warn there is another side to high-profile cases such as this one.

“We should be extremely careful before rushing to embrace an internet that is moderated by private companies by default,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in an email last month. While high-profile cases of highly offensive content being taken down gets a lot of attention, he added, content moderation “continues to silence” the voices of people around the world struggling to be heard.

__

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this story from Washington; AP technology writer Ryan Nakashima contributed from San Francisco.