Chris Hedges's Blog, page 520

Ivanka Trump Is Shutting Down Her Clothing Company

NEW YORK—Ivanka Trump is shutting down her fashion line of dresses, shoes and handbags that became a target of political boycotts and spurred concerns about conflicts of interest after her father was elected.

The president’s daughter said in a statement she made the decision so she could focus more on work as a White House adviser. She had stepped away from the day-to-day management of her company when she joined President Donald Trump’s administration.

“After 17 months in Washington, I do not know when or if I will ever return to the business, but I do know that my focus for the foreseeable future will be the work I am doing here in Washington,” she said. She called the move the “only fair outcome for my team and partners.”

The Ivanka Trump brand has been buffeted by politics since she joined the White House early last year. Sales appeared to surge at times due her celebrity as the U.S. president’s daughter — White House adviser Kellyanne Conway once urged on Fox News for people to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff” — only to get battered as those who disliked her father’s policies urged shoppers to boycott the line.

Nordstrom dropped the Ivanka Trump line last year, citing slowing sales, and recently Hudson Bay reportedly did the same.

The company said that its business was strong, and the decision to shut down had nothing do with its performance. Shutting down the brand means 18 people will lose their jobs.

Analyst Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said that “while the company is still viable, doing business has become far more challenging and these problems will only increase.”

Ivanka Trump recently has been encouraging U.S. companies to pledge to hire American workers. Her own company has been criticized for making its products in Chinese factories, for the conditions in those factories, and for being granted trademarks by foreign governments such as China that would want to curry favor with the president.

Her announcement comes amid a worsening trade fight between the United States and China. President Trump is seeking to drive China to the negotiating table and rectify what he sees as years of unfair trade practices.

The White House has imposed tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports and has itemized a list of $200 billion more in goods that may face tariffs by September. Neither of those tariffs would cover the clothing and handbags Ivanka Trump sells. But if the president were to make good on his threat to tax all $500 billion in Chinese imports, that would raise the price of everything her company imports from that country.

Since it is a private company, it is difficult to judge just how well Ivanka Trump’s business has been faring. The bulk of her assets —more than $50 million worth — is contained in a trust that holds her business and corporations. The trust generated over $5 million in revenue last year, according to a financial disclosure report filed with the government.

When Ivanka Trump joined the White House as adviser to her father, she agreed to several restrictions so that her financial interest in the business would not conflict with her public role as a White House adviser.

Still, the company drew criticism for benefiting from her White House ties.

In April last year, the Chinese government granted her company provisional approval for three new trademarks, the same day she and her husband Jared Kushner dined with the president of China and his wife at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The approvals have continued. In three months through May this year, China granted final approval for 13 of her trademarks and provisional approval for another eight.

Ivanka Trump’s company has said the 2017 Chinese trademarks were filed defensively to protect against squatters using her name. China has said its trademarks policy regarding Ivanka Trump’s company is in line with normal legal practice.

The Ivanka Trump brand has also come under criticism for conditions at factories where its products were made. The Associated Press spoke with workers last year at an Ivanka Trump shoe factory in Ganzhou, China, who described long hours, low pay and abuse.

The company said at the time that the “integrity” of its supply chain was a “top priority” and that it takes such allegations “very seriously.”

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AP business writers Matt Ott and Christopher Rugaber in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

American Society Would Collapse If It Weren’t for These 8 Myths

Our society should’ve collapsed by now. You know that, right?

No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a “Star Wars” movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now worth a record $141 billion. He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than he could ever spend on himself.

Worldwide, one in 10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has? 193 million years. (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our current world or even just our nation.

So … shouldn’t there be riots in the streets every day? Shouldn’t it all be collapsing? Look outside. The streets aren’t on fire. No one is running naked and screaming (usually). Does it look like everyone’s going to work at gunpoint? No. We’re all choosing to continue on like this.

Why?

Well, it comes down to the myths we’ve been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned.

I’m going to cover eight of them. There are more than eight. There are probably hundreds. But I’m going to cover eight because (A) no one reads a column titled “Hundreds of Myths of American Society,” (B) these are the most important ones and (C) we all have other shit to do.

Myth No. 8—We have a democracy.

If you think we still have a democracy or a democratic republic, ask yourself this: When was the last time Congress did something that the people of America supported that did not align with corporate interests? … You probably can’t do it. It’s like trying to think of something that rhymes with “orange.” You feel like an answer exists but then slowly realize it doesn’t. Even the Carter Center and former President Jimmy Carter believe that America has been transformed into an oligarchy: A small, corrupt elite control the country with almost no input from the people. The rulers need the myth that we’re a democracy to give us the illusion of control.

Myth No. 7—We have an accountable and legitimate voting system.

Gerrymandering, voter purging, data mining, broken exit polling, push polling, superdelegates, electoral votes, black-box machines, voter ID suppression, provisional ballots, super PACs, dark money, third parties banished from the debates and two corporate parties that stand for the same goddamn pile of fetid crap!

What part of this sounds like a legitimate election system?

No, we have what a large Harvard study called the worst election system in the Western world. Have you ever seen where a parent has a toddler in a car seat, and the toddler has a tiny, brightly colored toy steering wheel so he can feel like he’s driving the car? That’s what our election system is—a toy steering wheel. Not connected to anything. We all sit here like infants, excitedly shouting, “I’m steeeeering!”

And I know it’s counterintuitive, but that’s why you have to vote. We have to vote in such numbers that we beat out what’s stolen through our ridiculous rigged system.

Myth No. 6—We have an independent media that keeps the rulers accountable.

Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard on hard-on pills, but we can’t get anything resembling hard news because it’s funded by dicks.) The corporate media’s jobs are to rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It’s their mission to actually fortify belief in the myths I’m telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they’re standing on a playground wearing nothing but a trench coat.

Myth No. 5—We have an independent judiciary.

The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges recently noted, “The most basic constitutional rights … have been erased for many. … Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security.”

If you’re not part of the monied class, you’re pressured into releasing what few rights you have left. According to The New York Times, “97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence.”

That’s the name of the game. Pressure people of color and poor people to just take the plea deal because they don’t have a million dollars to spend on a lawyer. (At least not one who doesn’t advertise on beer coasters.)

Myth No. 4—The police are here to protect you. They’re your friends.

That’s funny. I don’t recall my friend pressuring me into sex to get out of a speeding ticket. (Which is essentially still legal in 32 states.)

The police in our country are primarily designed to do two things: protect the property of the rich and perpetrate the completely immoral war on drugs—which by definition is a war on our own people.

We lock up more people than any other country on earth. Meaning the land of the free is the largest prison state in the world. So all these droopy-faced politicians and rabid-talking heads telling you how awful China is on human rights or Iran or North Korea—none of them match the numbers of people locked up right here under Lady Liberty’s skirt.

Myth No. 3—Buying will make you happy.

This myth is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious).

If we’re lucky, we’ll make enough money during the week to afford enough beer on the weekend to help it all make sense. (I find it takes at least four beers for everything to add up.) But that doesn’t truly bring us fulfillment. So what now? Well, the ads say buying will do it. Try to smother the depression and desperation under a blanket of flat-screen TVs, purses and Jet Skis. Now does your life have meaning? No? Well, maybe you have to drive that Jet Ski a little faster! Crank it up until your bathing suit flies off and you’ll feel alive!

The dark truth is that we have to believe the myth that consuming is the answer or else we won’t keep running around the wheel. And if we aren’t running around the wheel, then we start thinking, start asking questions. Those questions are not good for the ruling elite, who enjoy a society based on the daily exploitation of 99 percent of us.

Myth No. 2—If you work hard, things will get better.

According to Deloitte’s Shift Index survey: “80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs” and “[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime.” That’s about one-seventh of your life—and most of it is during your most productive years.

Ask yourself what we’re working for. To make money? For what? Almost none of us are doing jobs for survival anymore. Once upon a time, jobs boiled down to:

I plant the food—>I eat the food—>If I don’t plant food = I die.

But nowadays, if you work at a café—will someone die if they don’t get their super-caf-mocha-frap-almond-piss-latte? I kinda doubt they’ll keel over from a blueberry scone deficiency.

If you work at Macy’s, will customers perish if they don’t get those boxer briefs with the sweat-absorbent-ass fabric? I doubt it. And if they do die from that, then their problems were far greater than you could’ve known. So that means we’re all working to make other people rich because we have a society in which we have to work. Technological advancements can do most everything that truly must get done.

So if we wanted to, we could get rid of most work and have tens of thousands of more hours to enjoy our lives. But we’re not doing that at all. And no one’s allowed to ask these questions—not on your mainstream airwaves at least. Even a half-step like universal basic income is barely discussed because it doesn’t compute with our cultural programming.

Scientists say it’s quite possible artificial intelligence will take away all human jobs in 120 years. I think they know that will happen because bots will take the jobs and then realize that 80 percent of them don’t need to be done! The bots will take over and then say, “Stop it. … Stop spending a seventh of your life folding shirts at Banana Republic.”

One day, we will build monuments to the bot that told us to enjoy our lives and … leave the shirts wrinkly.

And this leads me to the largest myth of our American society.

Myth No. 1—You are free.

And I’m not talking about the millions locked up in our prisons. I’m talking about you and me. If you think you’re free, try running around with your nipples out, ladies. Guys, take a dump on the street and see how free you are.

I understand there are certain restrictions on freedom we actually desire to have in our society—maybe you’re not crazy about everyone leaving a Stanley Steamer in the middle of your walk to work. But a lot of our lack of freedom is not something you would vote for if given the chance.

Try building a fire in a parking lot to keep warm in the winter.

Try sleeping in your car for more than a few hours without being harassed by police.

Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms.

Try signing up for the military because you need college money and then one day just walking off the base, going, “Yeah, I was bored. Thought I would just not do this anymore.”

Try explaining to Kentucky Fried Chicken that while you don’t have the green pieces of paper they want in exchange for the mashed potatoes, you do have some pictures you’ve drawn on a napkin to give them instead.

Try running for president as a third-party candidate. (Jill Stein was shackled and chained to a chair by police during one of the debates.)

Try using the restroom at Starbucks without buying something … while black.

We are less free than a dog on a leash. We live in one of the hardest-working, most unequal societies on the planet with more billionaires than ever.

Meanwhile, Americans supply 94 percent of the paid blood used worldwide. And it’s almost exclusively coming from very poor people. This abusive vampire system is literally sucking the blood from the poor. Does that sound like a free decision they made? Or does that sound like something people do after immense economic force crushes down around them? (One could argue that sperm donation takes a little less convincing.)

Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers—most of the time—don’t need guns and tear gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for us all to buy into, hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults.

It’s time to wake up.

If you think this column is important, please share it. Also, check out Lee Camp’s weekly TV show “Redacted Tonight” and weekly podcast “Common Censored.”

Trump’s Candidate Wins in Primary for Georgia Governorship

ATLANTA — With a damning secret recording of his opponent and a late endorsement from President Donald Trump’s White House, Secretary of State Brian Kemp won a decisive victory Tuesday in the Republican runoff for Georgia governor.

A self-described “unapologetic conservatinhve” whose campaign ran an eyebrow-raising ad that said he could use his own pickup truck to “round up criminal illegals,” Kemp rode conservatives’ contempt for the establishment to capitalize on his bare-knuckled, outsider politics.

He now faces Democrat Stacey Abrams, who could become the country’s first black female governor, in a race that will test Democrats’ assertion that changing demographics are turning Georgia from a GOP stronghold into a swing state. Among the most closely watched of the November midterms, the race already has drawn significant financial investments from both national parties.

Kemp thanked supporters at a party in his hometown of Athens, Georgia, and he credited Trump’s backing for sealing his win. “They poured gasoline in the fire and fueled the Kemp surge to victory,” Kemp said.

Kemp portrayed the race against Abrams as a battle with the “radical left” as Georgia’s future hangs in the balance. “Do you want a governor who is going to answer to Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton?” he asked.

Abrams tweeted her reaction to Kemp’s win Tuesday, saying “Tonight, I have an opponent: Kemp. The race for #GAGov may change, but our values never will. Service, faith & family guide our vision for GA: Affordable health care. Excellent public schools for every child. An economy that works for all.”

“Stand with us,” she wrote, followed by a link to a fundraising page.

Kemp beat once heavily favored Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who outraised Kemp more than 2-to-1 and had a Rolodex of endorsements from establishment Republicans including outgoing Gov. Nathan Deal, who was blocked by term limits from seeking a third term.

In a tweeted endorsement last week, Trump pointed to Kemp’s tough stance on illegal immigration and support for gun rights. With days left in the race, Vice President Mike Pence also stumped for Kemp on the campaign trail. Both reiterated their support for Kemp in tweets Tuesday.

Kemp’s victory is another endorsement success for Trump. He backed South Carolina congressional candidate Katie Arrington ahead of her upset of Republican Rep. Mark Sanford, and he helped Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama withstand a GOP primary challenge. That run could embolden the president to get even more involved in looming Republican primaries, including gubernatorial contests in Kansas, Tennessee, and Florida.

Nichole Jacobs went to Sandy Springs Christian Church to vote Tuesday for Kemp, citing his stance on immigration. Jacobs sends both her children to private schools, and feels her affluent Atlanta suburb is overrun with “illegal immigration.”

“People are moving out of Sandy Springs to get into a better school district or putting their kids in private schools,” Jacobs said.

Cagle began to lose ground after the release of a secret recording in June in which he says he helped pass a “bad public-policy” bill for political gain. The recording was made without Cagle’s knowledge during a private conversation with former GOP gubernatorial rival Clay Tippins, who last week endorsed Kemp.

“Trump is a very powerful man,” Cagle told watch party attendees Tuesday night in Atlanta after conceding to Kemp. He pumped his fist in the air, saying he put his best foot forward in the race as he congratulated Kemp.

“We have to rally behind him, so he can before the next governor of the state of Georgia,” Cagle said of Kemp. “He is a person who is undeniably ready to lead this state.”

Kemp had received widespread criticism — and national headlines — with television ads in which he pretends to intimidate a young man interested in his daughter with a shotgun and says he has a big pickup truck “just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.”

Kemp’s opponents also hammered his record of securing voter data as secretary of state, in a line of attack likely to become a refrain for Abrams during the general election.

Cagle labeled Kemp “inKempetent,” pointing to a 2015 incident in which Kemp’s office inadvertently released Social Security numbers and other identifying information of millions of Georgia voters on disks sent to members of the media and political parties. Kemp said a member of his staff was responsible for the error, that person was fired, and procedures were changed.

Kemp’s office made headlines again last year after security experts disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed until six months after it was first reported to election authorities. Personal data was again exposed for Georgia’s 6.7 million voters, as were passwords used by county officials to access files.

Kemp’s office blamed Kennesaw State University, which managed the system.

The general election campaign opens with Kemp presumed as the favorite in a state where Republican nominees typically garner about 52-53 percent of the statewide vote. But Democrats look to the enthusiasm — and money — behind Abrams, while arguing that Kemp’s hard-line approach could turn off enough moderates and independents.

That strategy could turn on voters like Keenan Rogers, a 25-year-old Cagle supporter, who wasn’t yet ready Tuesday night to heed his preferred candidate’s endorsement of Kemp.

“My knee-jerk reaction is to vote for Stacey Abrams,” Rogers said, but added that he wanted to do more research. “She might be a step forward for millennials … But right now, I’m a little apprehensive.”

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Associated Press writers Brinley Hineman in Sandy Springs, Georgia, Jeff Martin in Athens, Georgia, and Jonathan Landrum in Atlanta contributed to this report.

The Rebirth of Democratic Socialism

“Socialism has known increments of success, basic failure and massive betrayal. Yet it is more relevant to the humane construction of the twenty-first century than any other idea.”

With those words, the late Michael Harrington began his book “Socialism,” published in 1972. In his day, Harrington was often called “America’s leading socialist.” He was also one of the most decent voices in politics, a view shared not just by his friends but also by most of his critics.

Harrington founded Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which, in the often splintered politics of the left, was a breakaway group from the old Socialist Party. My hunch is that Harrington—whom I counted as a friend until his death in 1989 at the age of 61—would be amazed, though not entirely surprised, by the extraordinary growth of DSA since Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

It would thrill him that the organization is now heavily populated by the young, although I also suspect he would have spirited tactical arguments with youthful rebels about what works in politics. Harrington was a visionary realist, and the dialectic between those two words defined his life. He preached vision to those worn down by a tired political system, and realism to those trying to change it.

Socialists have had quite a journalistic run since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old DSA member, defeated veteran Rep. Joe Crowley, a genial and rather liberal stalwart of the old Queens Democratic machine, in a primary last month.

Opinion has been divided, roughly between those who see her as the wave of the future and those who warn of grave danger if Democrats move “too far to the left.” I use quotation marks because that phrase has been repeated so much, and because it’s imprecise and misleading.

The triumph of a young Latina who emphasized the interests of working people caught the imaginations of not only progressives but also many who do not fully agree with her politics. Even her posters were innovative, as Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen pointed out in The Washington Post. But she also represented something very traditional: the transition of power from one ethnic group to another. As Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan taught us long ago in their classic book “Beyond the Melting Pot,” never underestimate the role of ethnicity in New York politics.

Yet to use her victory as a prelude to a radical takeover of the Democratic Party badly misreads what has been happening. In Democratic primaries this year, more moderate candidates have done well. There have been important progressive victories, Ocasio-Cortez’s being one of the most striking, but no lurch left.

Moreover, Jake Sullivan, who was Hillary Clinton’s 2016 senior policy adviser, is right to argue in the journal Democracy that “Democrats should not blush too much, or pay too much heed, when political commentators arch their eyebrows about the party moving left.” (Disclosure: I have long-standing ties to Democracy.)

Sullivan sees “the center of gravity” in our politics moving in a more progressive direction in response to “the flaws of our public and private institutions that contributed to the financial crisis” and “the decades of rising inequality and income stagnation that came before.” Rescuing and rebuilding the American middle class require boldness, not timidity, he says, and an engagement with the persistent experimentation that FDR championed.

The presence of an active democratic socialist voice encourages the conversation Sullivan describes. It serves as a corrective to a debate that had skewed so far right that middle-of-the-road progressives—former President Barack Obama, for one—found themselves (laughably) labeled as “socialists.” Having real socialists in the arena laying out more adventurous positions—among them, single-payer health care and free college—moves the boundaries of discussion and could, in the long run, improve the outcomes in legislative bargaining. Radical tax cuts from the right and measured austerity from the center represents a dreary choice for discontented voters and offers little hope for solving the problems that ignite their anger.

Our new left should attend to the realism Harrington preached. Social reform in our country has usually depended on alliances of the center and the left, and outright warfare between them only strengthens the right. The word “democratic” must always be given priority over the word “socialist,” and broad coalitions are the lifeblood of democracies.

But Ocasio-Cortez and, if I may use the word, her comrades are shaking up politics in constructive and promising ways. For this moderate social democrat, that’s a cause for cheer.

House Progressives Introduce ‘People’s Budget’

Offering an ambitious alternative to the House GOP’s “morally bankrupt” 2019 budget proposal—which demands over $5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and other life-saving programs—the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) on Tuesday unveiled a budget that calls for massive investments in infrastructure, healthcare, and education while proposing significant cuts to the completely “out-of-control” Pentagon budget.

Titled The People‘s Budget: A Progressive Path Forward (pdf), the CPC’s plan also calls for a ban on “any expansion of U.S. combat troops in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and many other countries,” demanding an immediate end to “the policy of funding endless wars.”

“The electorate is looking for a new vision for the country and for foreign policy in particular,” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, noted in a statement on Tuesday. “The People’s Budget embodies that new vision by investing in the interests of the people over the interests of the arms industry and the billionaire class.”

“The #PeoplesBudget would take the blank check for endless war off of the books.” – @RepBarbaraLee @USProgressives #EndEndlessWar pic.twitter.com/hMMiOpLd62

— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) July 24, 2018

Highlighting the Trump administration’s deeply inhumane immigration agenda—which has been a boon for the private prison industry—the CPC’s budget also calls for scaling back “exorbitant funding for immigration detention and enforcement; creating due process, fairness, and accountability in the system; and eliminating the profit motive in immigration detention.”

“As Trump pushes to ramp up excessive border spending and hire more border patrol agents, we’re saying no,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the First Vice Chair of the CPC, declared on Tuesday. “I just returned from the border and what I saw was heartbreaking—kids in cages, awful conditions, and continued family separation. We can’t keep funding this broken system.”

While the People’s Budget stands no chance of passing the Republican-dominated Congress, Jayapal noted that the CPC plan is a “moral document” aimed at articulating House Democrats’ vision and priorities for the months ahead.

In addition to calling for trillions of dollars in funding for healthcare and education, the People’s Budget also demands “more for our climate,” Jayapal notes.

Specifically, the budget calls for a complete elimination of corporate welfare for fossil fuel companies while proposing $2 trillion “to eliminate our lead-contaminated water system” and $80 billion in disaster aid relief for families and communities devastated by extreme weather, which has been worsened by the climate crisis.

We're also demanding more for our climate. Clean air and clean water are human rights.

Polluters must pay their fair share for the waste they create. Tax breaks that prioritize the fossil fuel industry must end. We must prioritize frontline communities and renewable energy.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 24, 2018

In contrast to Republican economic policies and budgets that have produced falling wages while deepening inequality, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found in an analysis on Tuesday that the People’s Budget would “improve the economic well-being of low- and middle-income families” by making badly needed public investments, allowing the government to negotiate drug prices, and bolstering the safety net.

“The People’s Budget invests in our neglected infrastructure, ends the systematic inequality in our tax system by making corporations pay their fair share, and stops the rising cost of drugs,” Public Citizen concluded on Twitter. “It’s time to put political and economic power back in the hands of the people. “

U.S. Announces Billions to Help Farmers Hurt by Trump Tariffs

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will provide $12 billion in emergency relief to ease the pain of American farmers slammed by President Donald Trump’s escalating trade disputes with China and other countries.

However, some farm-state Republicans quickly dismissed the plan, declaring that farmers want markets for their crops, not payoffs for lost sales and lower prices.

The Agriculture Department said it would tap an existing program to provide billions in direct payments to farmers and ranchers hurt by foreign retaliation to Trump’s tariffs.

With congressional elections coming soon, the government action underscored administration concern about damage to U.S. farmers from Trump’s trade tariffs and the potential for losing House and Senate seats in the Midwest and elsewhere.

The administration said the program was just temporary.

“This is a short-term solution that will give President Trump and his administration the time to work on long-term trade deals,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue as administration officials argued that the plan was not a “bailout” of the nation’s farmers.

But that provided little solace to rank-and-file Republicans, who said the tariffs are simply taxes and warned the action would open a Pandora’s box for other sectors of the economy.

“I want to know what we’re going to say to the automobile manufacturers and the petrochemical manufacturers and all the other people who are being hurt by tariffs,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “You’ve got to treat everybody the same.”

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said the plan would spend billions on “gold crutches,” adding, “America’s farmers don’t want to be paid to lose — they want to win by feeding the world. This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.”

The program is expected to start taking effect around Labor Day. Officials said the direct payments could help producers of soybeans, which have been hit hard by retaliation to the Trump tariffs, along with sorghum, corn, wheat, cotton, dairy and farmers raising hogs.

The food purchased from farmers would include some types of fruits, nuts, rice, legumes, dairy products, beef and pork, officials said.

Trump did not specifically reference the plan during a speech to veterans in Kansas City, but asked for patience as he attempts to renegotiate trade agreements that he said have hurt American workers.

“We’re making tremendous progress. They’re all coming. They don’t want to have those tariffs put on them,” Trump told the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention. “We’re opening up markets. You watch what’s going to happen. Just be a little patient.”

Agriculture officials said they would not need congressional approval and the money would come through the Commodity Credit Corporation, a wing of the department that addresses agricultural prices.

The officials said payments couldn’t be calculated until after harvests come in. Brad Karmen, the USDA’s assistant deputy administrator for farm programs, noted that the wheat harvest is already in, so wheat farmers could get payments sooner than other growers.

Soybeans are likely to be the largest sector affected by the programs. Soybean prices have plunged 18 percent in the past two months.

Trump declared earlier Tuesday that “Tariffs are the greatest!” and threatened to impose additional penalties on U.S. trading partners as he prepared for negotiations with European officials at the White House.

Tariffs are taxes on imports. They are meant to protect domestic businesses and put foreign competitors at a disadvantage. But the taxes also exact a toll on U.S. businesses and consumers, which pay more for imported products.

The Trump administration has slapped tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese goods in a dispute over Beijing’s high-tech industrial policies. China has retaliated with duties on soybeans and pork, affecting Midwest farmers in a region of the country that supported the president in his 2016 campaign.

Trump has threatened to place penalty taxes on up to $500 billion in products imported from China, a move that would dramatically ratchet up the stakes in the trade dispute involving the globe’s biggest economies.

The moves have been unsettling to lawmakers with districts dependent upon manufacturers and farmers affected by the retaliatory tariffs.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said the proposal was raised a month ago when senators visited the White House for a broad discussion on trade. He said the lawmakers told the president “that our farmers want markets, and not really a payment from government. And he said, ‘I’m surprised, I’ve never heard of anybody who didn’t want a payment from government.’ ”

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who has been critical of the president in the past, said the tariffs “are a massive tax increase on American consumers and businesses, and instead of offering welfare to farmers to solve a problem they themselves created, the administration should reverse course and end this incoherent policy.”

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, whose family operates a farm in eastern Iowa, said the administration’s move was “encouraging for the short term” but farmers needed “markets and opportunity, not government handouts.”

The Agriculture Department predicted before the trade fights that U.S. farm income would drop this year to $60 billion, or half the $120 billion of five years ago.

Mark Martinson, who raises crops and cattle in north-central North Dakota and is president of the U.S. Durum Growers Association, said the $12 billion figure “sounds huge” but there are many farmers in need. “I don’t think this will cover us for a very long time — and it might not even buy me a tank of diesel. I think it will only put out the fire a little bit.”

The imposition of punishing tariffs on imported goods has been a favored tactic by Trump, but it has prompted U.S. partners to retaliate, creating risks for the economy.

Trump has placed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, saying they pose a threat to U.S. national security, an argument that allies such as the European Union and Canada reject. He has also threatened to slap tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts, potentially targeting imports that last year totaled $335 billion.

The president is meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday. The U.S. and its European allies are meeting as the dispute threatens to spread to automobile production.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Kevin Freking and Matthew Daly in Washington and James MacPherson in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed.

Truthdig editor’s note: On Saturday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin foreshadowed the administration’s Tuesday announcement of aid to farmers by saying that although the overall U.S. economy had not been harmed by the international dispute involving tariffs, the administration was exploring ways to help agriculture and other industries that had been hurt. Click here to see that AP article.

Voter Purges on the Rise, Minorities Affected Disproportionately, Report Finds

“Things have changed dramatically,” wrote Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder decision. He was referring to what he saw as a reduction in racial discrimination in the South and a rise in black residents’ access to voting since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The election of the first black president and higher rates of black voting since 1965 were reason enough for him and four other justices to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. It was a key provision that required Southern states with a history of voter discrimination to clear any changes to their voting laws with the federal government, under a process called preclearance.

However, according to “Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote,” a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, the optimism shown in the Shelby County v. Holder decision hasn’t been borne out. This is especially true when it comes to voter purging, the process by which people are taken off the voter rolls.

Voter purges are not inherently discriminatory. “When done correctly,” the report explains, “purges ensure the voter rolls are accurate and up-to-date.” When they’re abused, however, “purges disenfranchise legitimate voters (often when it is too close to an election to rectify the mistake), causing confusion and delay at the polls.” And the abuse post-Shelby v. Holder is rising.

“Our research,” the report says, “suggests great cause for concern that the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder … has had a profound and negative impact.”

The Brennan Center found that from 2014 to 2016, states removed almost 16 million voters from their rolls. Nearly 4 million more names were removed from voter lists during this period than from 2006 to 2008. Worse, the report continues, “for the two election cycles between 2012 and 2016, jurisdictions no longer subject to federal preclearance had purge rates significantly higher than jurisdictions that did not have it in 2013.”

Researchers believe that 2 million fewer voters would have been removed from  2012 to 2016 had the states previously subject to preclearance purged at the same rate as those states not subject to it. Texas and Georgia are just two examples the authors highlight:

In Texas, for example, one of the states previously subject to federal preclearance, approximately 363,000 more voters were erased from the rolls in the first election cycle after Shelby County than in the comparable midterm election cycle immediately preceding it. And Georgia purged twice as many voters—1.5 million—between the 2012 and 2016 elections as it did between 2008 and 2012.

As Michael Harriot adds in his analysis of the report in The Root, “These are not random, isolated cases. It is a methodical effort that disproportionately affects minority voters.”

The Brennan Center’s research and Harriot’s analysis bear this out.  He writes, “A federal court halted a purge after Hurricane Katrina after justices found that one-third of the purged names came from a majority black parish [Orleans Parish].” In 1986 in Louisiana, an official said  a voter purge “could really keep the black vote down considerably.”

Harriot explains the sometimes subtle, sometimes shockingly open methods that states use to purge minority voters in particular from their rolls:

Some states purge rolls based solely on names but non-whites are more likely to have the same names. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 16.3 percent of Hispanic people and 13 percent of black people have one of the 10 most common surnames, compared to 4.5 percent of white people.

Address changes, even within the same election districts, also affect whether someone gets purged. According to Harriot, black and Latinx voters are more likely to move, and officials use a process called voter caging, which, Harriot says, “intentionally sends mail to verify addresses in a format that cannot be forwarded, leading to the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.”

The consequences of Shelby v. Holder continue to influence the voting landscape, and the Brennan Center researchers are not optimistic about the outlook for protecting access to the ballot. Voter purging was not the only impact of the case. After Shelby County v. Holder, the researchers write:

Of the nine states once fully covered by the Voting Rights Act, seven have passed restrictive legislation since 2010. Of the 41 states not fully covered, only 18 passed restrictive laws over the same period. Two of these states (Florida and North Carolina) each had several counties subject to the Voting Rights Act.

Section 4 ensured that state lawmakers and election officials would at least have had more scrutiny from the federal government when it came to their voting operations and oversight.

Trump Administration Cripples Nuclear Safety Board

This article was produced in partnership with The Santa Fe New Mexican, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

The Trump administration has quietly taken steps that may inhibit independent oversight of its most high-risk nuclear facilities, including some buildings at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a Department of Energy document shows.

An order published on the department’s website in mid-May outlines new limits on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board — including preventing the board from accessing sensitive information, imposing additional legal hurdles on board staff, and mandating that Energy Department officials speak “with one voice” when communicating with the board.

The board has, by statute, operated independently and has been provided largely unfettered access to the nation’s nuclear weapons complexes in order to assess accidents or safety concerns that could pose a grave risk to workers and the public. The main exception has been access to the nuclear weapons themselves.

For many years, the board asked the Department of Energy to provide annual reviews of how well facilities handled nuclear materials vulnerable to a runaway chain reaction — and required federal officials to brief the board on the findings. It also has urged the energy secretary not to restart certain nuclear operations at various sites until work could be done safely.

At Los Alamos, the board has conducted ongoing reviews of the plutonium facility, holding hearings in Santa Fe and in recent years identifying imminent and “major deficiencies” in the building that could put the public at risk in the event of an earthquake. The lab sits on an active and complex geological fault system capable of causing a high magnitude quake.

The Energy Department’s order is the latest effort to limit transparency and weaken the board’s ability to conduct oversight, experts and critics say. And it represents another step by the Trump administration to stall or halt the work done by advisory boards and committees across the federal government, including a scientific advisory board at the Environmental Protection Agency and several of the Department of Labor’s advisory committees established to protect worker safety and health.

“This administration is very regressive,” said Robert Alvarez, who helped draft the legislation that created the board in the 1980s as a senate staff expert for Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, and subsequently served as senior policy adviser for former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. “We shouldn’t have to wait for something to blow up or catch fire in order to pay attention to a safety problem.”

The Department of Energy did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but said in a presentation that the order will increase efficiency and decrease costs. “This order does not hinder cooperation with the board or to prevent them from accomplishing their safety oversight responsibilities,” the presentation said. A spokesman for the safety board also declined comment on the order, saying it was in the Energy Department’s purview. The spokesman said the board and staff are waiting to see how it “shakes out.”

The five-member board was formed in 1988 near the close of the Cold War, as the public and Congress began to question the lack of accountability at the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies, which since the end of the Manhattan Project had made their own rules and been entirely self-regulating. At the time, there were reports of widespread radiological contamination at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado and problems at other nuclear facilities. The board’s formation also came on the heels of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Chernobyl, Alvarez said, showed the lax conditions in which nuclear power and materials were being manufactured both in the then-Soviet Union and the United States, and the calamity that could arise from an accident. The board was born out of that understanding, and now relies on a staff of more than 100, several of whom are stationed at lab sites. These staffers create weekly one-page reports that outline mishaps and near-misses and help inform larger recommendations.

The board does not have regulatory power, but for the first two decades of its life, all of its recommendations were adopted by the energy secretary.

Now, Alvarez said, the Department of Energy is trying to “isolate and fence off” the board’s access, part of a “constant effort to chip away at the ability of the board to do oversight.”

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said in an email that the board is integral to New Mexico’s weapons labs. The board also oversees facilities in California, Washington state, South Carolina and other states.

“We have seen too many serious safety and security lapses at DOE nuclear sites to accept any attempts to weaken” the board, Udall said, adding that he wants to preserve the board’s “critical role as an independent watchdog for public health and safety.”

He said he will be asking the Department of Energy for a “full account” of how the changes will affect worker safety and public health.

The safety board’s very existence — and its ability to provide nuclear safety information to the public — has been threatened in recent years, advocates of the board say. Last summer, for example, the board’s then-chairman proposed dissolving the board entirely. A few months later, the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Energy Department that oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, said less information should be made public by the board.

Last September, the board rescinded one of its long-pending recommendations, related to emergency safety, after concluding that the Department of Energy failed to understand the problems and that officials did not to intend to remedy them. The board has made no new recommendations since 2015.

Critics of the board, including some of its former leaders, say limiting its access to information may be a good thing.

Sean Sullivan, who retired as the board’s chairman in February, recommended last summer that the board be disbanded, saying it was a relic of the Cold War and its oversight was redundant of the work already done by the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. The proposal, he said, was a cost-cutting measure but it was opposed by other board members and abandoned.

Sullivan says it makes sense for the Department of Energy to have control over all information released to the public and it has long been frustrated when the safety board autonomously made safety information public.

For instance, Sullivan said, when board staff raised concerns in 2015 about uranium processing at the Y-12 nuclear facility in Tennessee, it was reported by a local paper and caused a headache for the nuclear security administration. Energy officials had yet to discuss problems at the site with congressional representatives from the state.

“Government shouldn’t try to hide things,” said Sullivan, emphasizing that he was speaking as a private citizen, but “if the public gets everything, conclusions may be drawn which are inaccurate — and that in and of itself can be problematic.”

Some of the nuclear security administration’s dissatisfaction with the board was revealed last fall when former Energy Undersecretary Frank Klotz recommended that the board stop publishing its weekly, one-page site reports from several national laboratories, including Los Alamos, online.

Klotz, citing an article about nuclear safety problems at Los Alamos, published in September in The New Mexican, said the reports were unflattering and might discourage workers from bringing issues to light in the future (even though workers are unnamed in the reports), the Center for Public Integrity reported.

Current acting board chairman Bruce Hamilton drew up a proposal recommending the board staff make weekly reports orally to board members, so as to avoid public embarrassment, but it was not adopted and the reports are still available. Around the same time, all Energy Department staff were required to undergo training to “control” the release of unclassified information.

David Jonas, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who served as general counsel for both the National Nuclear Security Administration and the safety board, said there have long been disagreements between the board and the Department of Energy. But there’s never before been such explicit limits on what the safety board can access, as outlined in the order, he said.

“The defense board is going to end up getting a little less information based on this,” he said.

The statute establishing the safety board explicitly gave board members and staff powers of investigation and said the secretary of energy should cooperate fully with the board and provide it “with ready access to such facilities, personnel, and information as the Board considers necessary to carry out its responsibilities.”

The new order appears to add caveats to how the law is carried out. Board members can no longer speak to lab staff without permission from the Department of Energy. The order may also make it difficult for them to access records related to how much radiation exposure workers receive.

While the statute that established the board technically trumps the order, the document gives the Department of Energy “more power to resist the defense board requests” and as a result will delay the process of getting information to the safety board, Jonas said.

He anticipates a legal fight, saying, “It’s a mess.”

Even before the start of the Trump administration, the Department of Energy had been tightening control over information released to the public.

In January 2017, while Barack Obama was still president, the Energy Department deleted several requirements for what types of incidents laboratory managers must report to a federal database used by the safety board to review problems at laboratories. Beginning that fall, labs no longer had to report certain potential safety problems or provide as much information about “near-miss” accidents.

The impact of the change is already apparent. Under the old reporting requirements, the Los Alamos lab detailed 103 incidents in 2016 and 77 incidents in the first nine months of 2017. Under the new order, Los Alamos reported just 13 incidents for the last three months of 2017 and 28 for the first six and a half months of 2018.

Sullivan, on behalf of the board, wrote a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry in May 2017 saying the new requirements “negatively affect safety oversight” and reduce nuclear facilities’ ability to learn from mistakes. (Sullivan personally voted against sending the letter.) Perry declined to make changes, saying the new rules still ensure “safety oversight is not degraded at defense nuclear facilities.”

The safety board voted last month to hold up to three public hearings beginning in late August on the intent of the new order and how it might impact access to information. Hamilton, the board chairman, was the only member to vote against holding the hearings.

‘Truly Terrible’: Up to 463 Parents Already Deported, Jeopardizing Family Reunification

As the Trump administration’s court-ordered deadline approaches for reuniting all the families it has forcibly separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers advised a U.S. District Court that as many as 463 parents may have already been deported, jeopardizing reunification with their children.

The news comes weeks after reports that many parents had been asked to sign away their rights to asylum by completing so-called “voluntary departure orders” with the understanding that they could be reunited with their children if they agreed to deportation.

BREAKING: Trump admin releases new numbers on family reunifications. They still say more than 900 parents are “ineligible” to get their children back. For the first time, they disclose that more than 400 have been deported without their kids. pic.twitter.com/1faKDZQbtE

— Alice Ollstein (@AliceOllstein) July 23, 2018

Trump snatched these children away from their parents and then deported the parents… The horror of this story is only growing…

“Trump administration says 463 parents of migrant children may have been deported” https://t.co/ProO6JfF3t pic.twitter.com/mWxJuIhLes

— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) July 24, 2018

This is a long fight ahead. This is truly terrible.https://t.co/4MQ0tRcuo2

— Alida Garcia (@leedsgarcia) July 24, 2018

Last month, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Trump administration to reunite 2,551 children—ranging in age from five to 17—with their parents and guardians by this Thursday, July 26.

According to the DOJ’s court filing, parents who are not currently in the U.S. may not be eligible for reunification with their children.

The ACLU and other immigrant rights advocates have argued that many of the parents who have been deported were pressured to agree to deportation without understanding their rights, following the traumatizing ordeal of family separation—many after fleeing violence and unrest in their home countries.

“If this number turns out to be as large as the report suggests, this is going to be a big issue for us,” Stephen Kang, an ACLU attorney representing parents in the case, told the Washington Post. “We have a lot of questions. We have concerns about misinformation given to these parents about their rights to fight deportation without their children.”

Last week, Sabraw temporarily halted deportations after the ACLU filed a report saying it needed time to contact and advise parents before they agreed to be deported —but the DOJ’s court filing suggests that it was already too late for hundreds of parents.

About 900 parents had deportation orders as of Monday, and the ACLU is seeking a court order that would halt the deportation of parents until after they have been reunited with their children—to avoid worsening the crisis described in the DOJ’s filing.

“It’s crucial that the decisions they make about the future of their children’s asylum claims are informed and non-coerced,” wrote Amrit Cheng on the ACLU’s “Speak Freely” blog on Monday. “It cannot be made until parents not only have had the time to fully discuss the ramifications with their children, but also to seek legal advice.”

Toll at 74 in Greek Fires; More Deaths Feared

ATHENS, Greece — The Latest on wildfires raging in Greece (all times local):

7:55 p.m.

Wildfires raging through seaside resorts near the Greek capital have torched homes, cars and forests, killing at least 74 people.

Authorities say 26 of the dead were found huddled together in a compound. Other bodies were recovered from the sea, where victims had fled to escape the flames and smoke.

The fires that broke out Monday were the deadliest to hit the country in decades. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has declared three days of national mourning. Officials fear the death toll could rise further.

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6:10 p.m.

Macedonia has offered 6 million denars (about 100,000 euros) as urgent help for neighboring Greece to battle wildfires that killed dozens of people near Athens.

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev posted Twitter on Tuesday that his government the funds will be available to Greek institutions responsible for dealing with fires.

Macedonia’s government will also set up a body to monitor the situation and coordinate humanitarian assistance.

Zaev has offered condolences to the Greek people and families who have lost their members and friends.

Macedonia’s Foreign Ministry has also issued a recommendation to its citizens to avoid traveling to the regions in the Attica area affected with wildfires.

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6 p.m.

Pope Francis is praying for the dozens who died in Greece’s wildfires and offering encouragement to firefighters and rescue crews.

The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sent a telegram of condolences Tuesday to Greek public and church authorities after at least 74 were killed in the forest fires near Athens.

The note said the pope was “deeply saddened” to learn of the death and destruction “and extends his heartfelt solidarity to all those affected by this tragedy.”

The wildfires tore through seaside resorts near the Greek capital, torching homes, cars and forests. More than 180 people are being treated for injuries.

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5:45 p.m.

Greece’s fire department says the death toll from forest fires that raged through seaside resorts near the Greek capital has increased to 74.

Fire Service spokeswoman Stavroula Malliri said Tuesday afternoon that the death toll had increased from 50 to 74, adding that a further 164 adults and 23 children were still being treated in hospitals for injuries.

Two main fires broke out Monday, one to the west of Athens near the town of Kineta and one to the northeast near the port of Rafina. Both were fanned by gale-force winds Monday that hampered firefighting efforts and sent hundreds of people fleeing to beaches, from where they were evacuated on boats late at night.

It was the Rafina fire which appears to have been the deadliest by far.

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3:50 p.m.

Officials in Poland say a Polish woman and her son drowned when their boat capsized during evacuation from wildfires in Greece.

Janusz Smigielski, deputy head of the Poznan-based Grecos office, said Tuesday that the two were vacationing in the resort of Mati, east of Athens. He said they drowned during the evacuation of 10 people by boat on Wednesday night, and that he was still waiting for Greek authorities to give details about the accident.

Smigielski said that a further 435 Grecos clients in the Athens region have been moved to hotels in safe areas.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry has appealed to Poles in Greece to be very cautious.

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This version removes erroneous references to other victims in the capsized boat. The woman and her son drowned, but it is not yet known what happened to others in their boat.

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3:30 p.m.

Croatia has offered two Canadair aircraft to help Greece battle wildfires that have killed dozens of people near Athens.

Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic said Tuesday Croatia is preparing the planes so they are ready to go to Greece if needed there.

At least 50 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in the wildfires. Croatia has said that none of its citizens are among the victims.

Wildfires also are common in Croatia in dry and windy weather during hot summers along the Adriatic Sea coast.

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3 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering her country’s help to fight the forest fires raging in Greece.

In a message of condolence sent to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday, Merkel said that “in these difficult hours Germany stands firmly by the side of our Greek friends.”

She added: “You can be sure of our willingness to provide support in coping with the fire disaster.”

Wildfires raging through seaside resorts near Athens have killed at least 50 people.

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2:30 p.m.

Italy is offering two Canadair aircraft to help Greece battle wildfires that have killed dozens of people near Athens.

Premier Giuseppe Conte on Tuesday tweeted Italy’s support for Greece and condolences for those who have died. He announced Italy was making the two water-dropping aircraft available.

Italy routinely experiences summertime wildfires, particularly in the south. Late Monday firefighters in Sicily brought the latest one under control near Acireale, with the help of two Canadairs.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has declared three days of national mourning for the dozens killed in the wildfires that swept through seaside areas near Athens. Many people fled to beaches, with some swimming out to sea to escape the choking smoke.

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2:10 p.m.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has declared three days of national mourning for dozens of people killed by wildfires that swept through seaside areas near Athens.

The official death toll Tuesday from the deadly fires that broke out Monday stood at 50. There were fears the toll could rise as rescue crews searched through the charred remains of houses, while the coast guard scoured the seas. Many people fled to beaches, with some swimming out to sea to escape the choking smoke. More than 700 people were evacuated from beaches.

“Today Greece is mourning, and in memory of those who were lost, we are declaring a three-day period of mourning,” Tsipras said. “But we mustn’t let mourning overwhelm us, because these hours are hours of battle, unity, courage and above all solidarity.”

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12:45 p.m.

Turkey has offered to send firefighting aircraft to neighboring Greece after twin wildfires tore through areas near Athens.

Speaking in Northern Cyprus Tuesday, Turkey’s foreign minister said Turkish airplanes and helicopters are on standby to aid Greece. Mevlut Cavusoglu said his Greek counterpart Nikos Kotzias thanked him for the offer but said assistance was not currently needed.

Bekir Pakdemirli, Turkey’s agriculture and forestry minister, in Ankara said the planes are “45 minutes away if there is a request and we are ready to intervene immediately.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also expressed his condolences and said his country was ready to help.

At least 50 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in the fires.

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10:35 a.m.

The Spanish government says it has sent two amphibious planes to help fight the twin forest fires in seaside areas of Greece that have killed nearly 50 people and injured more than 100.

Greece sought international help through the European Union as fires on either side of Athens left lines of cars torched, charred farms and forests, and sent hundreds of people racing to beaches to be evacuated by navy vessels, yachts and fishing boats.

Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture says that each of the two Canadair-type planes dispatched early Tuesday can hoard 5.5 tons of water and they are piloted by members of the country’s air force.

The ministry says in a statement that the decision to dispatch the planes was made only after an assessment of Spain’s own need for them.

The country is also prone to destructive wildfires every year, when dry and hot summers can be met with strong winds that quickly spread the flames.

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10:05 a.m.

Greece’s fire department says 49 people are confirmed to have died in forest fires that have swept through popular seaside holiday areas near the Greek capital.

Fire department spokeswoman Stavroula Malliri added that 156 adults and 16 children have been hospitalized with injuries. Eleven of the adults are in serious condition.

Malliri said Tuesday that strong winds have fanned the flames, with the fires spreading rapidly into inhabited areas, preventing people who are in their homes or in their cars from managing to flee.

Greece has requested firefighting help from the European Union, and Malliri said a military transport plane is arriving with 60 firefighters from Cyprus, while two water-dropping planes are expected from Spain.

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8:45 a.m.

Twin wildfires fanned by gale force winds tore through holiday resorts near Greece’s capital, killing at least 24 people by early Tuesday and injuring more than 100, including 11 in serious condition, in the country’s deadliest fire season in more than a decade.

There were fears the death toll would rise significantly. Rescue crews working through the charred areas of where the fire had passed through to the northeast of Athens told local media that at first light, they had found the bodies of more than 20 people gathered in one place near a beach.

Greek health authorities could not immediately confirm the increase in the death toll as the bodies had not yet reached hospitals.