Chris Hedges's Blog, page 531

4 Ways to Combat Trump’s Endless Mendacity

As the political season heats up, Trump is ramping up his lies through his three amplifiers: Fox News, rallies, and Twitter.

According to The Fact Checker’s database, the average daily rate of Trump’s false or misleading claims is climbing.

The problem isn’t just the number or flagrancy of the lies – for example, that Putin and the Russians didn’t intervene in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, or that the Mueller investigation is part of a Democratic plot to remove him.

And it’s not just that the lies are about big, important public issues – for example, that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans, or trade wars are harmless.

The biggest problem is his lies aren’t subject to the filters traditionally applied to presidential statements – a skeptical press, experts who debunk falsehoods, and respected politicians who publicly disagree.

The word “media” comes from the term “intermediate” – that is, to come between someone who makes the news and the public who receives it.

But Trump doesn’t hold press conferences. He doesn’t meet in public with anyone who disagrees with him. He denigrates the mainstream press. And he shuns experts.

Instead, his lies go out to tens of millions of Americans every day unmediated.

TV and radio networks simply rebroadcast his rallies, or portions of them.

At his most recent rally in Great Falls, Montana, Trump made 98 factual statements. According to the Washington Post’s fact checkers, 76 percent of them were false, misleading or unsupported by evidence.

For example, Trump claimed that “winning the Electoral College is very tough for a Republican, much tougher than the so-called ‘popular vote,’ where people vote four times, you know.”

The claim ricocheted across the country even though countless studies have shown that Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud and abuse are simply not borne out by the facts.

Meanwhile, over 50 million Americans receive his daily tweets, which are also brimming with lies.

Recently, for example, Trump tweeted that Democrats were responsible for his administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border (they weren’t), and that “crime in Germany is way up” because of migration (in fact, it’s down).

Around 6 million Americans watch Fox News each day and relate what they see and hear to their friends and relations.

Fox News is no longer intermediating between the public and Trump. Fox News is Trump. Many of his lies originate with Fox News; Fox News amplifies the ones that originate with Trump.

Fox News’s Sean Hannity is one of Trump’s de facto top advisers. Trump has just appointed Bill Shine, the former number two at Fox News, as his deputy chief of staff for communications.

No democracy can function under a continuous bombardment of unmediated lies.

So what are we to do, other than vote November 6 to constrain Trump?

First, boycott Fox News’s major sponsors, listed here. Vote with your wallet and starve the beast. Get others to join you.

Second, attend Trump’s rallies, as distasteful as this may be. You’re entitled to attend. He is, after all, the president of the entire country.

Organize and mobilize large groups to attend with you. Once there, let your views about his lies be heard and seen by the press. You can find out when and where his rallies will occur here or here.

Third, sign up for his tweets, and respond to his lies with the simple: “b.s.” You can sign up here.

Fourth, write to Twitter and tell its executives to stop enabling Trump’s lies. Its contact information is here.

In addition, as the Times’ Farhad Manjoo suggested recently, Twitter’s employees should be encouraged to make a ruckus – as did Amazon workers who pushed the firm to stop selling facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies, and Google employees who pressured Google not to renew a Pentagon contract for artificial intelligence.

Twitter defines its mission as providing a “healthy public conversation.” Let them know that demagoguery isn’t healthy.

Your vote on November 6 is the key, of course.

But as the political season heats up, Trump’s lies are heating up, too. And they will sway unwary voters.

So you need to be active now, before Election Day – on behalf of the truth.

Papa John’s to Pull Founder’s Image From Its Marketing

NEW YORK—Papa John’s, which has featured founder John Schnatter in logos and TV ads, is pulling his image from its marketing after reports he used a racial slur.

His face was off at least some materials by late morning Friday, though the company said the details and exact timing for everything were still being worked out. The pizza chain said Friday there are no plans to change its name.

Schnatter has long been the face of the brand, and Papa John’s has acknowledged in regulatory filings that its business could be hurt if Schnatter’s reputation was damaged. Papa John’s got a taste of that last year, when Schnatter stepped down as CEO after blaming disappointing pizza sales on the outcry surrounding football players kneeling during the national anthem.

This week, Papa John’s was already trying to further publicly distance itself from Schnatter after Forbes reported he used a racial slur during a conference call in May. Schnatter apologized and said he would resign as chairman. That prompted the company’s stock to recover some of the losses it suffered after the report, and shares climbed another 3 percent Friday.

Schnatter remains on the board, and is still the company’s largest shareholder with nearly 30 percent of the stock.

In addition to appearing in TV ads, Schnatter’s image has been on packaging and at the center of a logo that usually was all over the company’s website.

Keith Hollingsworth, a professor with Morehouse College’s business department, said keeping Schnatter in the marketing and advertising would signal to people that the company does not have a problem with his comments, or that it doesn’t think they are a big deal.

“Five years from now, they might be able to start bringing him back. But at the moment, you have to be very decisive and show you take this very seriously,” Hollingsworth said.

Schnatter had used the slur during a media training exercise, Forbes said. When asked how he would distance himself from racist groups, Schnatter reportedly complained that Colonel Sanders never faced a backlash for using the word. Schnatter subsequently issued a statement acknowledging the use of “inappropriate and hurtful” language.

“Regardless of the context, I apologize,” the statement said.

The fallout has already included Major League Baseball indefinitely suspending a promotion with Louisville, Kentucky-based Papa John’s that offered people discounts at the pizza chain after a player hit a grand slam. The University of Louisville also said Schnatter resigned from its board of trustees, and that the school will evaluate the naming arrangement for Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Papa John’s International Inc. began operations in 1984 and had more than 5,200 locations globally. The company cannot afford to alienate customers, with sales already under pressure from rivals such as Domino’s. For the first three months of this year, Papa John’s said a key sales figure fell 5.3 percent in North America.

Walmart Patents Technology to Eavesdrop on Workers

Just the latest corporation to spark privacy concerns over worker surveillance efforts, Walmart has patented audio technology that would allow the retail giant to eavesdrop on conversations among employees and between clerks and shoppers, to measure employee performance.

According to the patent document filed with the U.S. government, Walmart is calling the invention “listening to the frontend.” The patent reads, in part:

Many different types of sounds result from people in a shopping facility. For example, guests of the shopping facility may talk amongst each other or with employees of the shopping facility. Additionally, guests and employee movements and activities can generate additional sounds. A need exists for ways to capture the sounds resulting from the people in the shopping facility and determine performance of employees based on those sounds.

In addition to capturing conversations, according to the patent, Walmart’s spy system could also track the length of lines at the checkout counter, how many items are scanned, and the number of bags employees use. Although the technology could, for example, determine if a line is too long and more cashier lanes need to open, Ifeoma Ajunwa, an assistant professor at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, told BuzzFeed News, “There’s a lot of potential for misuse.”

“There’s potential for mission creep where it’s more like, ‘as a cashier you’re too friendly, you’re talking too much, and therefore not moving people along, so let’s penalize you,'” Ajunwa explained. “Even though the technology is presented as interested in one thing, the fact that it has the potential for both things to be captured is of concern.”

While the patent claims that “tracking performance metrics for employees to ensure that the employees are performing their jobs efficiently and correctly can aid in achieving these costs savings [for the company] and increases in guest satisfaction,” Ajunwa said that “several studies have shown that there is a psychological impact of pervasive surveillance,” pointing to findings that it can actually “lead to this opposition feeling, where employees view the employer not as benevolent, but as dictators. And it can impact that attitude toward the higher-up and can lead to resistance.”

“This Big Brother-style surveillance feels icky, especially from a retail giant known for its terrible abuses of its underpaid employees,” Splinter noted, but although the patent is raising privacy and labor rights concerns, Ajunwa warned that Walmart has a legal leg to stand on and likely wouldn’t even have to notify employees.

“Frankly, as long as the employer can make an argument for why the surveillance is necessary for a business purpose as opposed to a discriminatory purpose, there’s no law that says consent is required,” she said—and a union may be able to negotiate a contract requiring disclosure and potentially even other rules about the system, but Walmart is notorious for union-busting through surveillance, intimidation, and retaliation.

This appears to be a major development for the retail work environment, but BuzzFeed pointed out that similar surveillance systems have long been used “in call centers, where calls are recorded and reviewed, and employees are rated based on what they say and what the outcome of the call was.” Others compared the technology to patents that Amazon secured in February for a wristband that could be worn by warehouse employees to monitor where their hands go when they pack boxes, a development that alarmed privacy and workers’ advocates.

In a statement to BuzzFeed, Walmart declined to divulge any plans to develop and implement its patented surveillance tool. “We’re always thinking about new concepts and ways that will help us further enhance how we serve customers,” the company said, “but we don’t have any further details to share on these patents at this time.”

“Walmart is the country’s largest employer, which means technology like this, if implemented, would have an impact on millions of Americans,” Splinter highlighted. “It seems we don’t need an authoritarian state to monitor our every thought—our biggest corporations are happy to do it for us.”

Author of Emmett Till Book Gave FBI Interview Recordings

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Weeks after he published a book about the brutal slaying of Emmett Till, a North Carolina author received a call from FBI agents asking about his interview with a key witness who acknowledged lying about her interactions with the black teen.

Not long after that, Duke University scholar Timothy Tyson said, he turned over interview recordings and other research materials for his 2017 book on the 1955 case that shocked the nation and helped build momentum for the civil rights movement.

Hours after news broke Thursday about a renewed investigation prompted by the book, Tyson told reporters that he supports a fresh look at “one of the most notorious racial incidents of racial violence in the history of the world,” but doesn’t think his research alone will provide enough evidence for new charges.

“It’s possible that the investigation will turn up something. But there’s nothing that I know of, and nothing in my research, that is actionable, I don’t think,” he said. Still, he said investigators may be able to link it to other material in their possession.

Tyson’s 2017 book “The Blood of Emmett Till” quotes a white woman, Carolyn Donham, as saying during a 2008 interview that she wasn’t truthful when she testified that the black teen grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances at a Mississippi store six decades ago.

A federal official familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that information in the 2017 book was what led federal investigators to re-examine the case. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

The reopening of the Till case was disclosed in a federal report sent to lawmakers in March that said the Justice Department had received unspecified “new information.” The report’s contents weren’t widely known until Thursday.

The case was closed in 2007, with authorities saying the suspects were dead.

The prosecutor with jurisdiction over the Mississippi community where Till was abducted, District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, declined to comment on whether federal authorities had given him new information since they reopened the investigation. The Justice Department also declined to comment.

It’s unclear what new charges could result from a renewed investigation, said Tucker Carrington, a professor at the University of Mississippi law school.

Conspiracy or murder charges could be filed if anyone still alive is shown to have been involved, he said, but too much time likely has passed to prosecute anyone for other crimes, such as lying to investigators or in court.

Two white men — Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam — were charged with murder but acquitted in the slaying of the Chicago teen, who had been staying with relatives in northern Mississippi at the time. The men later confessed to the crime in a magazine interview but weren’t retried. Both are now dead.

Donham, who turns 84 this month, lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. A man who came to the door at her residence declined to comment about the investigation.

Deborah Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, said it’s wonderful her cousin’s killing is getting another look but declined to discuss details, saying: “None of us wants to do anything that jeopardizes any investigation.”

Abducted from the home where he was staying, Till was beaten and shot, and his body was found weighted down with a cotton gin fan in a river. His mother, Mamie Till Mobley, had his casket left open. Images of his mutilated body gave witness to the depth of racial hatred in the Deep South and inspired civil rights campaigns.

Donham, then 21 and known as Carolyn Bryant, testified in 1955 as a prospective defense witness in the trial of Bryant and Milam. With jurors out of the courtroom, she said a “nigger man” she didn’t know took her by the arm in the store.

“He said, ‘How about a date, baby?’” she testified, according to a trial transcript released by the FBI a decade ago. Bryant said she pulled away, and moments later the young man “caught me at the cash register,” grasping her around the waist with both hands and pulling her toward him.

A judge ruled the testimony inadmissible. An all-white jury freed her husband and the other man even without it.

In the book, author Tyson wrote that Donham told him her testimony about Till accosting her wasn’t true.

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” the book quotes her as saying.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in Los Angeles, Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, and Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Government Contractor Acknowledges Migrant Children Were Held Overnight in Vacant Office Building

The defense contractor that initially stated it held migrant children in a vacant Phoenix office building only for short periods of time while awaiting flights acknowledged Wednesday that it sometimes kept them there overnight.

It was, MVM Inc. spokesman Joseph Arabit said in an emailed response, “a regrettable exception” to the company’s policy to find a hotel instead, if needed, when there are delays in transporting children in custody to various placements designated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. It also appears to violate the company’s contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We work diligently … to minimize the time that these children are in transit,” Arabit said. “The process is a complex logistical undertaking with many things outside of MVM’s control, complicated by a recent spike in the number of children and families MVM was asked to escort, a lag in flight availability, and unforeseen placement changes.

“While far from the norm, this led to some recent unavoidable delays when the period before a flight extended beyond just several hours,” he said, adding that tighter controls, a full review and “appropriate actions” to prevent this from happening in the future are underway.

The use of the office came to light after a neighbor began videotaping the children’s arrivals, concerned that they might be being trafficked or at a minimum kept in inhospitable conditions.

When Reveal got to the site last week, the children were gone, leaving behind shreds of evidence that they had been there more than a few hours: a medication schedule for one child, an inflatable mattress, a box marked “baby shampoo.” The office has only a few bathrooms and no kitchen facilities – in fact, under its lease, cooking is not allowed. It is not licensed by the state as a child care facility.

Next door neighbor Lianna Dunlap reacted to the news that her hunch was at least partially correct, calling it horrifying and criticizing MVM for trying to “hide it from us.”

“It just shows that they’re not really following any rules or protocols,” she said. “Those poor children.”

MVM, a private firm with ties to the CIA, has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement worth up to $248 million to transport children. The company leased the nondescript one-level office building in March, shortly before the Trump administration’s push to separate children from their parents at the border began.

The company’s admission came after Reveal began to confirm details of who the children held in the office were and, in the process, learned that at least two were in MVM’s custody for more than 24 hours.

One arrived to the United States on her own. One was split from her parents. Some are toddlers. Others are in their late teens. And at least one is pregnant. All had made their way, alone or with friends and family, from Latin America to the United States in late spring.

And all found themselves in the unmarked office building over the course of several weeks in May and June.

One of them also ran away—and remains missing.

Phoenix Police Sgt. Vincent C. Lewis told Reveal that officers made a missing persons service call to that office on the morning of May 27, responding to an MVM staffer’s request.

“The teen who fled from them was described as approximately 16 years old in the call, but the police report lists him as 17,” Lewis said. The teenager, originally from Honduras, was first in the custody of Customs and Border Patrol in Tucson before he was handed over to ICE. He was being transported by MVM to his destination and was at the Phoenix office for roughly 40 minutes, Lewis said, when he took off. He hadn’t been at the office alone.

“Although officers made no observations of any children during the contact with staff, the report states that the juvenile would have been one of approximately 90 juveniles passing through this transfer facility on their way to the airport,” Lewis said.

By early June, neighbors say they began seeing children, sometimes more than a dozen at a time, quietly ushered into the MVM office. On June 22, they saw white vans pull up and take a large group away.

The videos and eye-witness accounts, along with new records obtained by Reveal, indicate that more than 200 children made their way through the vacant office building over the course of a month. The number may be much higher.

ICE previously told Reveal that, under its contract, MVM is “authorized to use their office spaces as waiting areas for minors awaiting same-day transportation” to the custody of the agency charged with caring for unaccompanied children. MVM also told Reveal last week that the Phoenix office “is not a shelter or a child care facility. … It’s a temporary holding place” for minors being flown out of the local airport and other locations.

“These offices are not overnight housing facilities, per the contract with ICE,” ICE spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said last week.

After obtaining a database of children’s names, identification numbers and dates of arrival in Phoenix that was originally shared among MVM employees, Reveal compared some of those names to federal records that indicate the date a child was admitted into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

In one case, a teenager from Honduras who made her way to the border without her parents was listed as having arrived at the Phoenix office the morning of June 3. But the 16-year-old wasn’t admitted into a shelter until two days later, on June 5. Records also indicate that teenager is pregnant.

In another case, a 15-year-old from Guatemala appears to have arrived at the MVM office on June 3 but was not admitted into a shelter until the following day. Records reviewed by Reveal suggest she had been taken from her parents at the border.

That girl currently is listed at a shelter in Texas. A man she entered the United States with, who may be her father, is currently detained in California. And, until Tuesday, a woman the teenager entered the U.S. with, likely her mother, was in an immigrant detention center in Colorado.

The woman’s name disappeared from detention records Wednesday morning. It’s unclear whether that means she was released into the United States or deported.

ICE spokeswoman Elzea requested complete details of any cases in which children appear to have spent the night at the MVM office – saying she would be happy to look into it if Reveal could provide full names and other unique identifiers. Reveal provided details about one girl. Elzea said ICE would look into the case.

“I don’t have a specific timeline for a response, but will keep you posted,” she wrote in an email.

Reveal reached out to Elzea again after MVM confirmed it had kept children there overnight. She said ICE was “looking into” it.

When contacted by Reveal earlier Wednesday with details about one case, Arabit—who runs MVM’s homeland security and public safety division—said he’d need more time to respond. Asked whether he could answer one question, “Did children ever spend the night at the MVM office in Phoenix?” Arabit said he would send a statement.

At 4:11 p.m. he emailed: “Thank you for your patience, the answer to your question is yes. Please see statement below.”

Citing “unavoidable delays,” the four-paragraph statement included the following:

“On those occasions and because MVM does not operate shelters, it is our policy to accompany the children affected to an appropriate accommodation such as a local hotel. When we identified several instances in which our policy was not followed, MVM instituted tighter controls and gave employees additional instruction to prevent these regrettable exceptions from happening again. “Since 2014, we have escorted 130,000 individuals and have always committed to the best interest of each individual child and family while they are in our care, adhering to the highest professional standards. In light of this recent experience, we have initiated a Program review and will take appropriate actions based on our findings.”

This story was originally published by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.

Detaining Immigrant Kids Is Now a Billion-Dollar Industry

SAN ANTONIO — Detaining immigrant children has morphed into a surging industry in the U.S. that now reaps $1 billion annually — a tenfold increase over the past decade, an Associated Press analysis finds.

Health and Human Services grants for shelters, foster care and other child welfare services for detained unaccompanied and separated children soared from $74.5 million in 2007 to $958 million dollars in 2017. The agency is also reviewing a new round of proposals amid a growing effort by the White House to keep immigrant children in government custody.

Currently, more than 11,800 children, from a few months old to 17, are housed in nearly 90 facilities in 15 states — Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

They are being held while their parents await immigration proceedings or, if the children arrived unaccompanied, are reviewed for possible asylum themselves.

In May, the agency issued requests for bids for five projects that could total more than $500 million for beds, foster and therapeutic care, and “secure care,” which means employing guards. More contracts are expected to come up for bids in October.

HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said the agency will award bids “based on the number of beds needed to provide appropriate care for minors in the program.”

The agency’s current facilities include locations for what the Trump administration calls “tender age” children, typically under 5. Three shelters in Texas have been designated for toddlers and infants. Others — including in tents in Tornillo, Texas, and a tent-and-building temporary shelter in Homestead, Florida — are housing older teens.

Over the past decade, by far the largest recipients of taxpayer money have been Southwest Key and Baptist Child & Family Services, AP’s analysis shows. From 2008 to date, Southwest Key has received $1.39 billion in grant funding to operate shelters; Baptist Child & Family Services has received $942 million.

A Texas-based organization called International Educational Services also was a big recipient, landing more than $72 million in the last fiscal year before folding amid a series of complaints about the conditions in its shelters.

The recipients of the money run the gamut from nonprofits, religious organizations and for-profit entities. The organizations originally concentrated on housing and detaining at-risk youth, but shifted their focus to immigrants when tens of thousands of Central American children started arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.

They are essentially government contractors for the Health and Human Services Department — the federal agency that administers the program keeping immigrant children in custody. Organizations like Southwest Key insist that the children are well cared for and that the vast sums of money they receive are necessary to house, transport, educate and provide medical care for thousands of children while complying with government regulations and court orders.

The recent uproar surrounding separated families at the border has placed the locations at the center of the controversy. A former Wal-Mart in Texas is now a Southwest Key facility that’s believed to be the biggest child immigrant facility in the country, and First Lady Melania Trump visited another Southwest Key location in Phoenix.

Advocates on both sides of the aisle criticize the growing number of kids housed in government shelters, but they have different reasons — and they blame each other.

“You can’t put a child in a prison. You cannot. It’s immoral,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who has been visiting shelters.

Gillibrand said the shelters will continue to expand because no system is in place to reunite families separated at the border. “These are real concerns that the administration has not thought through at all,” she said.

But President Donald Trump says cracking down on immigration ultimately can lead to spending less money and having fewer immigrants in government custody.

“Illegal immigration costs our country hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said at a recent rally. “So imagine if we could spend that money to help bring opportunity to our inner cities and our rural communities and our roads and our highways and our schools.”

In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance policy” directing authorities to arrest, jail and prosecute anyone illegally crossing the border, including people seeking asylum and without previous offenses. As a result, more than 2,300 children were turned over to HHS.

In a recently released report, the State Department decried the general principle of holding children in shelters, saying it makes them inherently vulnerable.

“Removal of a child from the family should only be considered as a temporary, last resort,” the report said. “Studies have found that both private and government-run residential institutions for children, or places such as orphanages and psychiatric wards that do not offer a family-based setting, cannot replicate the emotional companionship and attention found in family environments that are prerequisites to healthy cognitive development.”

Some in the Trump administration describe the new policy as a “deterrent” to future would-be immigrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and abject poverty in Central America, Mexico and beyond.

But Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families — an HHS division — said the policy has exposed broader issues over how the government can manage such a vast system.

“It was never intended to be a foster care system with more than 10,000 children in custody at an immediate cost to the federal taxpayer of over $1 billion dollars per year,” Wagner said in a statement.

The longer a child is in government custody, the potential for emotional and physical damage grows, said Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“The foundational relationship between a parent and child is what sets the stage for that child’s brain development, for their learning, for their child health, for their adult health,” Kraft said.

“And you could have the nicest facility with the nicest equipment and toys and games, but if you don’t have that parent, if you don’t have that caring adult that can buffer the stress that these kids feel, then you’re taking away the basic science of what we know helps pediatrics.”

A judge in California has ordered authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days — and the government has completed more than 50 of the reunions of children under 5 by Thursday.

How Racist Trolls and White Liberals Try to Silence Women of Color

“White supremacy isn’t just burning crosses and swastikas. It’s also silencing, tone-policing and shaming. It’s good white folks’ private assurances of support and public silence. It’s public outcry of caged kids and private inaction. It’s fast, slow, deep and shallow.“ —Saira Rao on Twitter

A deputy district attorney in California’s San Bernardino County named Michael Selyem has been placed on leave and is under investigation for tweeting deeply offensive, sexist remarks about Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Last week, the 51-year-old white man, who is responsible for criminal prosecutions of suspected gang members, tweeted, “Being a loud mouthed c#nt in the ghetto, you would think someone would have shot this bitch by now.”

The shocking statement by a local government official about a federal lawmaker should have made the front pages of newspapers, particularly as it echoed an earlier threat by the president, who tweeted, “Be careful what you wish for Max!” But Waters, who is African-American and proudly progressive, was sold out by her own party’s leaders when she encouraged civil disobedience against Trump administration officials over violations of immigrants’ human rights. Donald Trump and Selyem’s denunciations of Waters are to be expected; by definition, racists hate people of color. But it is the tacit white liberal encouragement of such threats by the likes of California’s Nancy Pelosi and New York’s Chuck Schumer—leaders of House and Senate Democrats, respectively—that is more appalling.

Saira Rao, a first-time congressional candidate who lost to Democratic incumbent Diana DeGette in Colorado’s recent primary elections, is experiencing, in microcosm, what Waters is enduring and has endured for years. A few days ago, Rao tweeted a link to Emory University professor George Yancy’s op-ed in The New York Times, titled, “Should I Give Up on White People?” Rao answered the question, saying, “Short and long answer: YES.”

What followed was a series of events that began when Paul Rosenthal, a white male state representative from Colorado, a Democrat and a self-described community activist, attempted to school Rao on Twitter, saying, “As bold progressives, if we splinter & snipe at each other, racists will not get the message they need to change.”

Setting aside the naive and ludicrous assertion that racists will somehow get the message that their racism is wrong, Rosenthal encouraged local media coverage of Rao’s tweet by tagging an online media outlet called Colorado Politics. That action tipped off another white male figure, Joey Bunch, who called Rao for an interview and accused her of being racist and feeding “reverse racism.” Bunch’s resulting article, which Rao denounced as a “hit piece,” in turn triggered an article on Breitbart, and it was only a matter of time before death threats and racist hate mail of the kind Waters has gotten started trickling in.

Just hours before she left Denver with her family to embark on a temporary exile in response to the threats, Rao spoke with me about her ordeal. She decried the silence of elected officials from Colorado, who have yet to denounce the vitriol to which Rao has been subjected. Rao made it the basis of her campaign platform to challenge Democrats from the left, particularly on the issue of race, after her powerful piece in The Huffington Post about the Democratic Party went viral. She told me that Democrats are guilty of abusing the people of color who support them. “They take us—not just for granted—they use us and they kick us to the curb when they no longer have use for us.”

Rao zeroed in on the real reason for her treatment, and that of Waters: It is a silencing of critics of racism. “Calling out racism and white supremacy isn’t racist. Calling Maxine Waters ‘un-American’ and calling her statements ‘unacceptable,’ that’s racist,” said Rao, paraphrasing Schumer and Pelosi’s attacks on their fellow Democrat.

She points out that today’s unofficial collaboration between overt white supremacists and white liberals is a new manifestation of an old American political streak. In his 1963 “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. made an angry declaration that is often overlooked today:

I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice.

Black women are the most reliable demographic for the Democratic Party, turning out to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 in higher numbers than any other group, and consistently helping to pick progressive candidates. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez remarked that “black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and we can’t take that for granted. Period.”

Given Waters’ mistreatment, Perez’s pronouncements have not appeared to change the party’s attitude. And now black women are putting the party on notice: A large group of black female leaders and their allies wrote a strongly worded letter to the Democratic Party leadership on July 3, expressing their “profound indignation and deep disappointment over your recent failure to protect Congresswoman Waters from unwarranted attacks from the Trump Administration and others in the GOP.” The signatories added, “That failure was further compounded by your decision to unfairly deride her as being ‘uncivil’ and ‘un-American.’ ”

Across the nation, women of color, including Rao, are running in elections, tired of being taken for granted by a party that pays them lip service but refuses to protect them. Reports have emerged that the Democratic Party has not offered these women the political support they need in their races. In its 2018 “Red to Blue” program, in which the party highlighted candidates to back during the midterms, not a single African-American was listed. When black female candidates have done well in primary races, they have done so without support from the party establishment. A reporter at The Atlantic reached out to a number of such candidates and found that most had not even been acknowledged by party leaders.

The Democratic Party needs to both support women of color in concrete ways when they are running for office and to have their back when racist trolls like Trump, Selyem and others attack them. To do less in these dire times is to be part of the problem.

To do less also spells the end of the party. Rao’s words rang true when she told me, “We’re bigger and better than they are.” In just 20 weeks of campaigning, and being, in her words, a “no-name idea, a person of color running in a hyperwhite part of a hyperwhite state, with no corporate money,” Rao was able to garner 43,000 votes. Other women of color—the most high-profile being Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who just won a second primary as a write-in candidate in a New York district she didn’t even campaign in—have had similar successes. The Democratic Party can either embrace these women or end up on the same side as the Republicans—as an out-of-touch political establishment of wealthy white elites looking out for no one but themselves.

DOJ Appealing Judge’s OK of AT&T-Time Warner Merger

WASHINGTON—Stung by a federal judge’s dismissal of its objections to AT&T’s megamerger with Time Warner, the Trump Justice Department is challenging the decision with a legal appeal.

The Justice Department said in a one-sentence document Thursday it is appealing the ruling last month by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, which blessed one of the biggest media deals ever following a landmark antitrust trial.

Leon rejected the government’s argument that the phone and pay-TV giant’s $81 billion takeover of the entertainment conglomerate would hurt competition, limit choices and jack up prices for consumers to stream TV and movies.

Leon’s ruling allowed Dallas-based AT&T to absorb the owner of CNN, HBO, the Warner Bros. movie studio, “Game of Thrones,” coveted sports programming and other “must-see” shows.

The Justice Department’s appeal is lodged with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a step up from the federal district court where the six-week trial unfolded in the spring.

The merger was swiftly consummated, just two days after Leon’s June 12 ruling and almost as soon as the Justice Department signaled it wouldn’t seek to temporarily block the merger while it pondered an appeal. The deadline for closing the merger was June 21.

Some legal experts believe the government could have a hard time convincing the appeals court to overturn Leon’s ruling. Opposing the merger forced the federal antitrust regulators to argue against standing legal doctrine that favors mergers among companies that don’t compete directly with each other.

It was the first time in decades the government had challenged that doctrine by suing to block a merger.

AT&T said Thursday it’s ready to defend Leon’s ruling against the government’s appeal.

“The court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based and well-reasoned,” the company’s general counsel, David McAtee, said in a statement.

“While the losing party in litigation always has the right to appeal if it wishes, we are surprised that the (Justice Department) has chosen to do so under these circumstances. We are ready to defend the court’s decision.”

From the bench, Leon had urged the government not to ask for a halt to the deal, saying it would bring “a manifestly unjust outcome.” The deadline could be missed, allowing under the merger agreement for either company to walk away from the deal and forcing AT&T to pay Time Warner a $500 million “breakup” fee.

Dallas-based AT&T Inc. is a phone, cable and satellite behemoth that became the biggest pay-TV provider in the U.S. with its acquisition of DirecTV in 2014. It claims about 25 million of the 90 million or so U.S. households that are pay-TV customers.

The merger fuses a company that produces news and entertainment with one that funnels that programming to consumers. AT&T asserted during the trial that it needed to grow to survive in the era of Google, Amazon and Netflix.

When the deal was first made public in October 2016, it drew fire from then-candidate Donald Trump, who promised to kill it “because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” Trump has publicly feuded with Time Warner’s CNN, calling it “failing” and a purveyor of “fake news.” The president’s statements didn’t come up during the trial, though his antipathy loomed in the background.

AT&T has committed to certain conditions under which it will run Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting, which includes CNN. For instance, it will manage the Turner networks as part of a separate business unit, distinct from operations of AT&T Communications, which includes DirecTV and U-verse.

In addition, AT&T Communications will have no say in setting Turner’s prices or other terms in contracts with companies that distribute its content.

That apparently wasn’t enough, however, to satisfy the Justice Department.

Already the ruling has started opening the floodgates to deal making in the fast-changing worlds of entertainment production and distribution.

Just a day after Leon ruled, Comcast launched a $65 billion cash bid for the bulk of 21st Century Fox — topping Disney’s all-stock $52.5 billion offer in December.

Waiting in the wings are potential big-billions deals involving Verizon and CBS and T-Mobile and Sprint.

Ukraine’s Leader Backs Trump on German Gas Deal

BRUSSELS — The Latest on the NATO summit in Brussels (all times local):

9:35 p.m.

The president of Ukraine says he agrees with U.S. President Donald Trump that a natural gas pipeline venture between Germany and Russia carries dangers.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Thursday on France 24 TV that the pipeline “is an absolutely political project” and poses a “danger” for Europe’s energy security and competitiveness.

Poroshenko said: “I fully support … the estimation of President Trump.”

At a NATO summit on Wednesday, Trump asserted that Germany is “totally controlled” by and “captive to Russia” over the pipeline project.

The U.S. president appeared to be referring to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would double the amount of gas Russia can send directly to Germany, skirting transit countries such as Ukraine.

Ukraine isn’t a NATO member, but Poroshenko was present and met with Trump.

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3:40 p.m.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte insists that Italy hasn’t agreed to any additional financial commitments to NATO amid pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Italy has inherited spending commitments that we haven’t changed. So there is no additional spending,” Conte told a news conference. However, he said the issue over a better distribution of contribution to the military alliance is legitimate.

However, Conte acknowledged that the issue of imbalance in NATO contributions was real.

“We must consider that NATO has evolved over time. It was born 70 years ago. Its vocation, features, organizational structure and operative strategy have changed. And rightly so, the United States says NATO is more focused on European defense and interests and it doesn’t seem proportionate to maintain this form of contribution.”

Conte added that he hadn’t heard any threat by Trump to withdraw the United States from the alliance, as was reported by some media.

“My ears didn’t hear Trump threaten to leave NATO. So I can’t confirm this news. If he said something on the side I don’t know,” Conte said.

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2:45 p.m.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis says NATO has agreed to build a three-star command structure in Romania hosting 400 troops.

The East European country is concerned about defending its borders and about Russian aggression after Crimea was annexed in 2014.

Speaking at the end of the NATO summit, Iohannis said Thursday the alliance will upgrade a multinational brigade in the southern city of Craiova that opened last year to a permanent base.

At the summit, Romania agreed to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan from 700 to 950, something Parliament needs to approve.

Romania will spend 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, and Iohannis said other members “will try to spend more than 2 percent.”

He denied that the U.S. President Donald Trump had been aggressive in his demands to make members up their spending.

“Trump said things plainly as is normal between friends and allies. … We committed ourselves to spending a bit more.”

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1:30 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron has denied reports that U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw the United States from the NATO military alliance in a dispute over funding.

“President Trump never at any moment, either in public or in private, threatened to withdraw from NATO,” Macron told reporters.

He said the leaders of the alliance’s 29 members met in an extraordinary session on Thursday morning at the request of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Trump has complained that many NATO members are lagging behind in their defense spending.

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1:20 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron has denied President Donald Trump’s claim that NATO allies have agreed to boost defense spending beyond 2 percent of gross domestic product.

Macron said: There is a communique that was published yesterday. It’s very detailed.”

He added: “It confirms the goal of 2 percent by 2024. That’s all.”

The summit statement affirms a commitment made in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea that NATO allies would halt defense spending cuts, start spending more as their economies grow, with the aim of moving toward 2 percent of GDP within a decade.

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12:50 p.m.

Polish President Andrzej Duda says the debates over NATO spending that U.S. President Donald Trump has triggered are paying off for countries like his on the eastern flank because they have led to more spending by allies on their militaries.

Appearing to brush off the severity of divisions between Trump and other NATO members, Duda said the important thing for his nation is that new commitments have been made to secure the region near Russia.

Duda said he would be “shocked” if Trump made any move would decrease the region’s security. He noted that he had met with Trump the evening before and they discussed increasing the U.S. troop presence in Poland.

Duda also told reporters Thursday that the leaders’ meetings were confidential and that he was surprised at other leaders who leaked details to the media.

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12:30 p.m.

U.S. President Donald Trump says the U.S. commitment to NATO “remains very strong” despite reports that he threated to pull out in a dispute over defense spending.

Trump says at a news conference Thursday in Brussels that he told “people” that he would be “very unhappy” if they didn’t increase their commitments.

Trump says the U.S. has been paying “probably 90 percent of the costs of NATO.”

Trump adds that he was “extremely unhappy with what was happening and they have substantially upped their commitment.”

NATO had no immediate comment.

Trump once declared NATO “obsolete.” He says Thursday: “I believe in NATO.”

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12:15 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told reporters in Brussels that “there was a clear commitment to NATO by all” at an emergency session of the military alliance.

She said that U.S. President Donald Trump raised the topic of better burden-sharing among NATO members again, “as has been discussed for months,” and that, “we made clear that we’re on the way.”

Trump has several times assailed Germany for not spending a large enough proportion of its gross domestic product on defense.

Merkel stressed that Germany is NATO’s second-biggest contributor when it comes to troops.

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11:55 a.m.

Two officials at the NATO summit in Brussels say the alliance is meeting in an emergency session amid demands from U.S. President Donald Trump for all members to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense.

Officials said that non-members of the alliance had been asked to leave the room early Thursday and that everyone in the room had been told to leave their phones outside.

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9:50 a.m.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is insisting that Georgia will one day join the world’s biggest security alliance, despite separatist ambitions in parts of the former Soviet republic.

Stoltenberg said Thursday: “Georgia will become a member of NATO.” He said the 29-nation alliance supports the territorial integrity of Georgia, including its sovereignty over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2008, which led to the regions declaring independence. Russia has since been supporting them financially and militarily.

Despite Georgia’s important contribution to NATO operations, the alliance is unlikely to invite the country in until the conflict with the two regions has been resolved.

Democrats Introduce Bill to Abolish ICE

WASHINGTON—Democrats in Congress are introducing legislation to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.

The bill from Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democratic leader of the progressive caucus, would give Congress a year to develop a more “humane immigration enforcement system” and terminate ICE.

Key House Democrats are putting forward the legislation after public outcry over ICE immigration raids. ICE is conducting raids as part of Donald Trump’s crackdown on those living in the country illegally.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan calls it “the craziest position” he’s ever seen. He told reporters that Democrats are now so far left of the American mainstream, they “have really jumped the sharks.”

He says the bill is why he feels “very good” about the GOP’s chances in the fall election.