Chris Hedges's Blog, page 75

Media’s Anti-Sanders Bias on Full Display in L.A. Debate

Tonight’s Democratic presidential debate will be sponsored by Politico and PBS, simulcast by CNN, and moderated by Politico chief political correspondent Tim Alberta, along with PBS NewsHour’s anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff, senior national correspondent Amna Nawaz and White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.

Politico and CNN have demonstrated time and time again their systemic and institutional anti-Sanders bias. Who can forget Politico’s piece (5/24/19) showing Sanders standing next to a tree with dollars for leaves, or CNN (3/15/16; FAIR.org, 3/16/16) cutting away from a Sanders speech to show an empty podium with the chyron “Standing By for Trump to Speak”?

Current Affairs‘ Nathan Robinson (12/3/19) pointed out a strange omission in a NewsHour campaign report.

But as an individual, PBS’s Alcindor has a long and documented history of hostile, unfair coverage of Sanders. Earlier this month, in fact,  NewsHour and Alcindor were criticized for their rather stunning omission of Sanders from a campaign story (12/2/19) that mentioned and showed images of Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Sestak and Steve Bullock. Somehow there was no time or space for Sanders, who has generally been the No. 2 candidate, behind Biden, in polls of Democratic primary voters. The panel Alcindor hosted following the report mentioned Biden, Buttigieg, Warren and Michael Bloomberg, but, again, not Sanders.

This is far from an isolated incident; Alcindor has repeatedly used her articles, tweets and media appearances to portray Sanders in an unflattering light. She has used innuendo to suggest Sanders is too old to run for president or, shockingly, was partly responsible for a mass shooting. She has asked loaded questions to suggest that Sanders’ refusal to drop out of the race was sexist, perpetuated the evidence-free “Bernie Bro” narrative, presented Sanders’ supporters as “idol” worshipers and sanitized antisemitic tropes used against Sanders.

It should be noted from the outset that Alcindor is an experienced,  and award-winning journalist, who did exceptional reporting on Trayvon Martin and the Ferguson protests at USA Today before being hired by the New York Times in 2015. (She left the Times for PBS NewsHour in 2018.) This stellar overall record makes her heavily slanted Sanders reporting all the more jarring.

New York Times‘ Yamiche Alcindor (6/14/17) seemed to blame Bernie Sanders for the “rage buried in some corners of the progressive left.”

In June 2017, in Alexandria, Virginia, a lone gunman shot and injured five members of  the Republican congressional baseball team, including Rep. Steve Scalise. The shooter—James T. Hodgkinson, who was killed by police in a shootout—turned out to be one of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers for Bernie Sanders. Alcindor used this to link the shooting to Sanders and his supporters in general, in an article that claimed, in headline and body,  that the “Attack Tests Movement Sanders Founded” (6/14/17).

FAIR responded with an Action Alert: “With Sleazy Innuendo, NYT Lays Virginia Attack at Bernie Sanders’ Feet” (6/15/17), and encouraged its readers to contact the New York Times and “ask for more responsible coverage of the Virginia shooting incident.” Media critic and FAIR contributor Adam Johnson explained:

New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor (6/14/17) started with a false premise and patched together a dodgy piece of innuendo and guilt-by-association in order to place the blame for a shooting in Virginia on “the most ardent supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders.” We learned…that the shooter, James T. Hodgkinson…had been a Sanders campaign volunteer, and that his social media featured pictures of the Vermont senator and his brand of progressive, anti-Republican language. This was enough for Alcindor to build a piece based on the premise that Sanders’ “movement” had been somehow responsible for the attacks, and was thus “tested” by them.

Johnson was not exaggerating when he called out the “innuendo” in the article, which suggested that violence was the natural result of the dangerous messages Sanders’ supporters get from “their idol”:

The most ardent supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders have long been outspoken about their anger toward Republicans — and in some cases toward Democrats. Their idol, the senator from Vermont, has called President Trump a “demagogue” and said recently that he was “perhaps the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country.”

Now, in Mr. Sanders’ world, his fans have something concrete to grapple with: James T. Hodgkinson, a former volunteer for Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign, is suspected of opening fire on Republican lawmakers practicing baseball in Alexandria, Va.

That shooting on Wednesday… may prove to be an unexpected test for a movement born out of Mr. Sanders’ left-wing, populist politics and a moment for liberals to figure out how to balance anger at Mr. Trump with inciting violence.

Alcindor also suggests that Sanders’ rhetoric is as hate-mongering and “dangerous” as Trump’s. Never mind that Sanders practices and preaches a philosophy of nonviolence, while Trump regularly engages in dehumanizing language, praised a member of Congress who attacked a reporter, and had his name invoked in at least nine physical attacks. What mattered for Alcindor was that “some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters had earned a belligerent reputation for their criticism of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party and others who they believed disagreed with their ideas.”

To support her point, Alcindor even quotes Michael Savage, an Islamophobic, homophobic, Trump-supporting shock jock, whom she sanitized as “a radio host” “on the political right”: “I warned America the Dems constant drumbeat of hatred would lead to violence!” And she quotes Bill Mitchell, whom the Weekly Standard (10/18/16) has called Trump’s “unofficial Twitter mascot”: “The Left in this country is ushering in a new #CultureOfViolence where violent hate is the new normal.”

Alcindor’s concern about politicians inspiring violence in their adherents appears to be highly selective. She never wrote a piece, for instance, about how Hillary Clinton’s campaign was “tested” by the actions of actor Wendell Pierce, a Clinton supporter who was charged with battery after assaulting a female Sanders supporter in Atlanta. Nor did she write a piece on an incident in which a straight white male Clinton donor hit a young woman of color with his hand and cane.

The outcry over Alcindor’s article was not limited to the Bernie camp alone. Many Clinton supporters, and even veterans of the Clinton campaign themselves, have pushed back on Alcindor’s comments. Brian Fallon, Clinton’s national press secretary in 2016, replied to Alcindor’s article by tweeting: “A hideous act was carried out by someone who backed Sanders. That doesn’t mean Sanders incites/condones violence.”

The sentiment was retweeted by Jennifer Palmieri, director of communications for the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

Alcindor also employed a variation of the“some say”/“people say” dodge—so popular with Fox News—asking Sanders during a press conference in June 2016: “What do you say to women who say that you staying in the race is sexist because you’re standing in the way of what could be the first female president?” Sanders responded:

Is that a serious question?… Your question implies that any woman…who is running for president is by definition the best candidate…. Is your point that it is sexist for any man to oppose her?

Alcindor followed up, “My point is that if she has more delegates than you tomorrow…that if you stay in the race, is it sexist?” At which point Sanders replied, “I don’t think it is sexist.”

One can forgive Sanders for questioning whether Alcindor’s question was serious. Presumably she would not have asked Clinton if she was being antisemitic by standing in the way of what could be the first Jewish president—though anti-Semitism, not just misogyny, was a factor in the 2016 race. Even accepting Alcindor’s arbitrary “more delegates” threshold, was Clinton racist in 2008 because she didn’t drop out immediately and endorse Barack Obama? There are several reasons a candidate would stay in a primary race, even after victory is mathematically impossible—including, notably, an interest in shaping the platform at their party convention. To suggest that not dropping out of the race was “sexist” diminishes the real fight against sexism.

But Alcindor stood by her question, tweeting, “Some women think @BernieSanders will be standing in way of history tomorrow if HRC wins and he doesn’t concede. He got testy when I asked; Oh well.”

Talking Points Memo (6/6/16) reported on the exchange with a headline that parroted Alcindor’s framing:

And the Washington Post (6/7/16) wrote, “Sanders himself got into a testy exchange with a female Times reporter,” even suggesting that Sanders’ sexism was responsible for his response to Alcindor:

We can’t assume that Alcindor’s gender was a factor here. It’s possible that Sanders is simply sick and tired of questions — from anyone — that suggest he is stubbornly clinging to a shot at the nomination that doesn’t really exist.

The Washington Post (6/7/16) accompanied its headline about “Bernie Bros…Harassing Female Reporters” with a photo of a female non-reporter being confronted by non-“Bernie Bros.”

–

To make things worse, the Post article ran under the headline “The Bernie Bros Are Out in Full Force Harassing Female Reporters.” It was accompanied by a photo of a woman with egg dripping from her hair. A female reporter being harassed by Bernie Bros, as the headline suggests? No, it turned out to be a Trump supporter who was egged after giving the finger and reportedly making anti-Mexican remarks to a crowd of largely Latino Trump protesters, who had no particular connection to the Sanders campaign. Several days later, after the article and photo had been widely circulated, the Post replaced the image and added an editor’s note:

An image that originally accompanied this post on The Fix‘s main page and appeared in a video in the post depicted a woman being egged. Given the headline and context of this post, the photo could have been misconstrued as a reporter, which it was not. It was of a Trump supporter at a rally last week in California. The photo has been changed.

It’s hard to see how the photo could have been anything but misconstrued.

A few days after asking the senator from Vermont if his failure to drop out of the race was sexist, Alcindor tweeted that Sanders shouted “shun the nonbelievers,”  “stay in the race” and “Bernie or bust” at a rally she was covering. To be fair, Alcindor did delete the tweet and issued a correction—hours after it had been pointed out that Sanders had not said any of these things:

CORRECTION: @BernieSanders SUPPORTERS shouted “Shun the nonbelievers,” “Stay in the race,” and “Bernie or bust,” at rally. Tweeting late.

It’s very plausible that a reporter could accidentally omit the word “supporters” from a tweet. But it’s noteworthy that Alcindor made the same mistake on another occasion, tweeting, “Rosario Dawson mentions @HillaryClinton ‘s name and @BernieSanders boo loudly.” She never corrected or deleted that tweet.

Alcindor’s New York Times article (6/9/16) likewise claimed that “many” at the rally shouted the same slogans cited in her tweet. Several attendees responded that they didn’t hear these chants. (Indeed, it seems unlikely that many people would chant the awkward phrase “shun the nonbelievers.”)

Alcindor wrote several other articles that presented anti-Sanders opinion as fact: “Inquiry Into Bernie Sanders’ Wife May Tarnish His Liberal Luster,” read one headline (7/15/17). “ Is Bernie Sanders, 75, Too Old for 2020? His Fiercest Fans Say No,” read another (6/13/17), which insinuated that only Sanders’ most zealous supporters, and not his normal ones, were OK with his age.

Alcindor co-wrote a news analysis (New York Times, 6/8/16) criticizing Sanders for a “speech of striking stubbornness” in which he “basked, bragged and vowed to fight on.”

One particularly negative article (6/8/16)—admittedly, a “news analysis” and not a reported piece—revealed Alcindor’s disdain for the senator. The article, headlined, “Hillary Clinton Made History, but Bernie Sanders Stubbornly Ignored It,” claimed that

despite the crushing California results that rolled in for him on Tuesday night, despite the insurmountable delegate math and the growing pleas that he end his quest for the White House, Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the stage in Santa Monica and basked, bragged and vowed to fight on.

In a speech of striking stubbornness, he ignored the history-making achievement of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who became the first woman in American history to clinch the presidential nomination of a major political party.

The piece continued:

The raw math is brutal and indisputable….This would be the time, under normal circumstances, for a primary rival to acknowledge insurmountable odds, pay tribute to a prevailing opponent and begin the work of stitching together a divided political party…. That was the conciliatory message that a vanquished Mrs. Clinton delivered eight years ago to the day, on June 7, 2008, four days after Barack Obama had sealed his party’s nomination — a contest that was mathematically closer than the one with Mr. Sanders now…. Party unity, it seems, is the farthest thing from his mind at the moment.

Alcindor and her co-writer, Michael Barbaro, somehow forgot that before dropping out, Clinton said she did not “buy the party unity stuff,” and, in fact, justified staying in the race because Obama could be shot, warning, “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.” The New York Times (5/24/08), in fact, reported that these offensive comments “stir[red] uproar.” Yet eight years later, the 2008 Clinton campaign was recalled only as “conciliatory” and an exemplar of party unity.

Alcindor’s digs at Sanders ranged to the pettiest. She tweeted out a menu from Sanders’ chartered flight to the Vatican in April 2016, apparently to suggest that the rich fare offered made Sanders a hypocrite. It became enough of a narrative that Snopes weighed in on it, clarifying that “the menu was not any different from Delta’s commercial and charter flight offerings for Spring 2016.”

More accurately, the “community activist” was shouting at Bernie Sanders about “Zionist Jews” (Twitter, 4/9/16).

While Alcindor went out of her way to portray Sanders’ supporters unfavorably, she seemed to sanitize a Sanders critic who lobbed antisemitic tropes at the senator. In April 2016, while covering Sanders speaking at the Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, Alcindor tweeted a video of a man she identified as “John Prince, a community activist,” who “interrupted @BernieSanders to shout about gentrification.”

Alcindor left out some important context: As Real Clear Politics (4/10/16) and several other outlets reported, the man had been shouting questions at Sanders based on antisemitic stereotypes:

The Zionist Jews — and I don’t mean to offend anybody — they run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run every campaign…. What is your affiliation to your Jewish community?

Her video captured only the tail end of the exchange, meaning that the “community activist” had already asked Sanders about the “Zionist Jews.”

If Alcindor’s first tweet ignored the antisemitic content of the rant, her followup tweet (accompanied by a more audible video) presented them without comment: “More of protester John Prince saying he wants to know about @BernieSanders’ ties to Jewish real estate owners,” she wrote, as Prince said:

The giant Zionist Jews… they’re buying real estate, and they’re selling it ten times the value. What is Bernie’s affiliation? Everything he says goes against Wall Street, the big banks and the federal reserves. Those are his family.

Alcindor’s uncritical framing of the protestor’s demands was condemned by several people on Twitter, Jews and non-Jews alike, including supporters of Hillary Clinton, one of whom tweeted, “#ImWithHer but I don’t want to give credence to these types of attacks.”

The kind of debate moderation we’re not looking for (Twitter, 6/27/19).

To be fair, Alcindor did refer to antisemitism in the article she wrote on the Apollo event, describing the “protester” as “interrupting the Vermont senator with antisemitic remarks.”  And Twitter is different from journalism. But at the very least, a New York Times journalist should be expected to clarify.

One can hope that as a moderator Alcindor will treat Sanders with the fairness that all candidates deserve, but the prospects are dim. After the June Democratic debate, Alcindor approvingly tweeted an exchange between Sanders and moderator Rachel Maddow. After Maddow asked Sanders about his gun record, the senator responded, “No, that’s a mischaracterization of my thinking.” Maddow replied, “It’s a quote of you.”

As former Rhodes scholar Maddow no doubt understands, quoting someone and mischaracterizing them are not mutually exclusive. Sanders was not claiming that Maddow misquoted him, but rather that she took the quote out of context, which she did, by only citing part of it. Even PolitiFact (7/3/19) deemed Sanders’ assertion of mischaracterization to be “mostly true.” Unfortunately, but predictably, most corporate media reported on Maddow’s retort as a gotcha moment.

Alcindor, tweeting the exchange, wrote, “Journalism at work, folks.” Let’s hope this form of “journalism” doesn’t dominate tonight’s debate.

Hezbollah-Backed Professor to Form New Government in Lebanon

BEIRUT — A former education minister backed by the militant Hezbollah group and its allies was selected Thursday as Lebanon’s new prime minister to break a political impasse amid mass protests, although he almost immediately ran into opposition from demonstrators on the streets.

Hassan Diab, a professor at the American University of Beirut, was named by President Michel Aoun after a day of consultations with lawmakers in which he gained a simple majority in the 128-member parliament. He won support from 69 lawmakers, including the parliamentary bloc of the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal movements, as well as lawmakers affiliated with Aoun.

But Diab failed to get the support of Lebanon’s major Sunni leaders, including former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. That is key because under the country’s sectarian-based system, the premier must come from the Sunni community.

That also will make it difficult for him to form an inclusive Cabinet able to gain the international community’s trust and unlock badly needed assistance for the tiny Mediterranean country that is facing its worst economic and financial crisis since the 1975-90 civil war.

Friendly nations, including France, have made clear they will not support the heavily indebted nation before a reform-minded Cabinet is formed.

Demonstrators called the 60-year-old Diab part of the old ruling class that they oppose and continued their protests.

In his first public address, Diab said he would work quickly to form a government in consultations with political parties and representatives of the protest movement. He said he is committed to a reform plan and described the current situation as “critical and sensitive,” requiring exceptional efforts and collaboration.

“We are facing a national crisis that doesn’t allow for the luxury of personal and political battles but needs national unity,” Diab said. He told the protesters he hears their “pain.”

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale was traveling to Beirut, the most senior foreign diplomat to visit the country since the crisis. U.S. diplomats have said they support the quick formation of a government that can bring about reform.

Support from Iran-backed Hezbollah guarantees Diab a thorny path, potentially inviting criticism from Western and Gulf nations that had supported Hariri. The Shiite group is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., some Gulf Arab countries and a few Latin American nations. The European Union considers only Hezbollah’s military wing to be a terrorist group.

Maha Yahya, director of Carnegie Middle East, a Beirut-based think tank, said Diab arrives with no support from his community and no consensus at a time when Lebanon is facing an economic meltdown and needs international assistance.

“The problem is he is coming on as a weakened prime minister, ” she said.

Following Diab’s appointment, protesters gathered in central Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, the epicenter of the protests. They cast him as part of the class of politicians they oppose. Supporters of Hariri also began taking to the streets.

“I see the country is going to waste. With this kind of government, no one will deal with it, no Arab, no Europe and No U.S.,” said Saeb Hujrat, a protester in Martyr Square. He held a large banner reading: “We want a government outside of the ruling class.”

For two months, the leaderless protests have been calling for a government made up of specialists that can work on dealing with the economic crisis. The protests have recently turned violent, with frequent clashes between security forces and protesters.

Supporters of Hezbollah and Amal also have attacked the protest campsite in Beirut several times. The most recent one came last weekend when they set cars on fire and threw stones and firecrackers at security forces for hours.

Diab gained attention after caretaker premier Hariri withdrew his name from consideration following weeks of haggling and deep divisions among the various factions over naming him again. Hariri resigned Oct. 29 in response to the unprecedented mass protests and as an already-dire economic crisis deteriorated quickly.

Hariri had insisted he would head a Cabinet made up of specialists to deal with the crisis. Hezbollah, which initially backed him, demanded a government including all major political factions.

Diab served as minister of education from 2011-14, when Hezbollah and its allies overturned a Cabinet headed by Hariri at the time.

Diab was in the U.K. when Lebanon’s civil war broke out. There, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees in communications and computer engineering from the universities of Leeds Metropolitan, Surrey and Bath.

To Understand Trump, You Must Understand His Cult

As Americans watch the political drama of impeachment against President Donald Trump unfold in Congress, it seems clear that Democrats and Republicans seem to occupy entirely different planes of reality, speaking in opposite terms about the same issues. It is a reflection of the political polarization in the nation at large that social scientists have struggled to understand. But there is a simple explanation: We are witnessing the development of a dangerous and massive cult. And Trump, the cult leader, knows exactly how to wield his power over his supporters in order to retain his position.

At a rally in Hersey, Pennsylvania, last week, multiple Trump supporters threatened violence if their leader was removed from power, with one man invoking his “.357 Magnum,” and another predicting a second civil war. One woman explained, “As a Trump supporter, I believe in him.” Do such statements not sound like those of cult members? How else to explain the fact that Trump has convinced millions of Americans that he stands up for them even while his policies have disproportionately benefitted wealthy corporations? How else to make sense of how he spews lies at a record-breaking pace while at the same time claiming he is the only one telling the truth?

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The Cult of Trump



by Chris Hedges

The Cult Education Institute lists the warning signs of a “potentially unsafe group/leader,” and almost all of them are uncanny descriptions of President Trump. Among the signs that dangerous cult leaders display is “absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.” Trump’s backers have made it clear they think he is above the law. The most important law-enforcer in the nation, Attorney General William Barr, who is a leader in the cult of Trump, believes the president is above the law. Trump’s acting chief of staff has made it clear Trump can do what he likes because the rules don’t apply to him and that the rest of us should just “get over it.” Trump has himself said, “I can do whatever I want.” And he made it clear he was aware of his status as a cult leader even before he was president when he said during his campaign that he could shoot someone in the middle of the street and still retain his supporters.

Another warning sign of being in a cult is that the leader displays “[n]o tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.” In a democracy, the news media in particular represents “critical inquiry.” Trump the cult leader has waged war on the press for the entirety of his presidential tenure, dismissing it as the “enemy of the people.” His repeated claims that media outlets are “fake news” have worked, as the latest Pew Research Center report on Journalism and Media found that “on item after item, Republicans consistently express far greater skepticism of the news media and their motives than Democrats.”

The Cult Education Institute also warns cult leaders claim to have “the exclusive means of knowing ‘truth’ or receiving validation; no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.” Trump has said to his supporters, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” A CBS poll last year found that among Trump’s strongest supporters, 91% trust the president for all their information, compared to only 63% who trust their own friends and family.

Another warning sign that sounds like it was specifically written with Trump in mind is that dangerous cult leaders make “[n]o meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.” Trump is so obsessively secretive about his financial records that he has fought numerous legal battles at the same time to keep his tax returns secret and has now appealed to the Supreme Court, where he hopes the conservative majority that he installed will back him.

Trump also engages in what the Cult Education Institute describes as “unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.” He has described immigrants and asylum seekers at the border as an “invasion,” and said last week at a rally: “At stake in our present battle is the survival of the American nation itself. We will destroy our country if these people get in.”

Do Trump’s supporters realize they are part of the nation’s biggest cult? Just as instructive as the warning signs about leaders are the lessons to ordinary people. One such example is “Extreme obsessiveness regarding the group/leader, resulting in the exclusion of almost every practical consideration.” When a CBC reporter in November profiled Trump supporters attending his rally in Tupelo, Mississippi, he found people who camped out in the freezing cold overnight just so they could be among the first to be let in. One after another they told the reporter how much Trump had changed their lives and how far they had driven across the country to attend the rally. One man saw the billionaire president as “the man of the people.” One woman said she had never imagined backing a president in this manner and said, “We love him and it is an honest, heartfelt love because he loves us.”

Warning signs that you might be in a cult also include, “Whenever the group/leader is criticized or questioned, it is characterized as ‘persecution.’” Trump, who is clearly aware of the allegiance he has built up among his followers through repetition, has said the words “witch hunt,” so often that his supporters really do believe the entire impeachment process, and before that the special counsel’s probe, were unfair persecutions of their leader rather than attempts to hold him accountable. No matter how much evidence is revealed or how many witnesses come forward, Trump’s backers have stuck with him consistently and that is because they believe him when he says he is innocent, can do whatever he wants, and is the victim of a witch hunt.

A psychological study of Trump’s supporters uncovered key traits that are remarkably consistent with the warning signs of being in a cult. The research, published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, concluded five phenomena were commonly found among Trump supporters: “authoritarianism, social dominance, prejudice, lack of intergroup contact and relative deprivation.” Also, “[a]uthoritarian leaders have long understood that they can attract followers by enhancing the perception of dangerous threats to the society and offering simple solutions.”

Trump knows that by sheer repetition he can brainwash his supporters into believing anything he says. Perhaps the most dangerous aspects of a cult leader’s behavior are to characterize constitutionally legitimate efforts to investigate him as an “attempted coup.” Even more frightening is his signaling to his cultish followers that he is eligible for a third term as president, an idea so ludicrous that one might imagine it would be dismissed outright. However, in the ‘cult of Trump’ such a notion may actually gain traction. In fact, Trump supporter and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has even said he is heading up Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign.

How does one save one’s country from a cult? A New York Times Magazine article titled “How to Get Someone Out of a Cult,” offers some advice to that effect, albeit on an individual level. Author Malia Wollan cited one former cult member who “had what she thought of as a little shelf in the back of her mind … where she stowed doubts, questions or concerns.” The woman — who successfully left the cult — explained, “At some point all of those things get too heavy and the shelf breaks and that’s when they’ll realize they need to get out.” She advised that, “Your job is to get them to put more things on their shelf.”

In other words, one of the best means of battling the cult of Trump is to continue to hammer away at the truth, hoping the shelf of nagging doubts at the back of the MAGA heads may collapse someday with the weight of facts and truth.

Trump Could Be Impeached More Than Once

“And still I rise, Madam Speaker,” Congressmember Al Green, Democrat of Houston, said, opening his statement during the House hearing on the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Those words were taken from Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise”:

“You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

Angelou died five years ago but was very present in the House chamber during the historic hearing. Later in the proceedings, Maxine Waters opened her fiery remarks: “Unfortunately, the rules of debate won’t allow me to cite all of the reasons why this president should be impeached; there are many. However … to quote the late Maya Angelou, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.'”

Al Green and Maxine Waters, both prominent African American members of Congress, have been leading the drive for impeachment. Green first brought impeachment to the House floor in May 2017. Within days, he was receiving racist death threats. One caller left a voicemail that threatened: “You ain’t gonna impeach nobody, you [bleep]. Try it, and we’ll lynch all you [bleep]. You’ll be hanging from a tree.”

He has managed to get a vote on impeachment three times. In December 2017, 57 members of Congress joined him. Less than two months later, the number climbed to 65. Last July, 94 voted with him. Maxine Waters is among the first members of Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment, and has done so tenaciously.

Al Green delivered his remarks Wednesday beside a large poster bearing the phrase “Impeach Now” and the image of a young Honduran girl crying as her mother is being searched by Customs and Border Protection in June 2018. The iconic photo of Sandra Maria Sanchez and her daughter Yanela went viral, capturing the cruelty of Trump’s harsh immigrant detention policy. Green said: “I rise because I love my country. Madam Speaker, shall any man be beyond justice? This is the question posed in 1787 by George Mason at the Constitutional Convention.”

The Houston congressman continued: “In the name of democracy, on behalf of the republic, and for the sake of the many who are suffering [Green pointed to the poster at this point], I will vote to impeach and I encourage my colleagues to do so as well. No one is beyond justice in this country.”

On Dec. 4, Green sent a memo to members of Congress that opened, “How will history judge this Congress that passed a resolution indicating President Trump made harmful, racist comments if it does not impeach him for his impeachable racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, transphobic, xenophobic language instigating enmity and inciting violence within our society?”

Donald Trump is only the third president in the country’s history to be impeached, along with Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Neither Johnson nor Clinton was ultimately removed from office by a vote in the Senate. Richard Nixon faced impeachment in the House and removal from office by the Senate in 1974 but opted to resign instead to avoid that certain outcome.

While Maxine Waters, along with Al Green and many others, have a long list of Trump’s offenses they consider impeachable, the House Democrats settled on just two: abuse of power, related to his attempts to pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden, and the obstruction of Congress’ investigation into that abuse of power.

“Am I satisfied?” Al Green asked, speaking on the “Democracy Now!” news hour Wednesday morning, hours before Trump’s impeachment hearing began. “I am at a point wherein I believe that we must go forward with these articles of impeachment. I do not believe that the Constitution prohibits additional articles of impeachment.”

Green represents a majority minority district in southwest Houston. He continued, on “Democracy Now!,” “If Andrew Johnson could be impeached, in Article 10 of the articles of impeachment against him, for reasons rooted in his hatred, his bigotry and racism, this president can be impeached for these reasons, as well.”

At this point, it seems clear that the Republican-controlled Senate will acquit Trump of these articles of impeachment, and he will remain in office. But that does not deter Congressman Al Green.

“This may not be the end of it,” Green concluded. “The Constitution allows us to impeach a president multiple times if the president commits multiple impeachable acts.”

House Passes USMCA Trade Deal With Broad Bipartisan Support

WASHINGTON — One day after its historic impeachment votes, the Democratic-led House gave President Donald Trump an overwhelming bipartisan victory Thursday on a renegotiated trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.

By a 385-41 vote, the House approved a bill that puts in place terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The legislation passed after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her colleagues won key concessions from an administration anxious to pass the trade deal before next year’s election season makes that task more difficult.

The deal is projected to have only a modest impact on the economy. But it gives lawmakers from both parties the chance to support an agreement sought by farmers, ranchers and business owners anxious to move past the months of trade tensions that have complicated spending and hiring decisions.

The GOP-controlled Senate probably will take up the legislation when members return to Washington after the holidays and after dealing with impeachment.

Trump made tearing up the North American Free Trade Agreement a hallmark of his presidential run in 2016 as he tried to win over working-class voters in states such as Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“Critics said it couldn’t be done, but he made it happen. Another promise made, another promise kept,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Some said the agreement did not do enough to prevent U.S. jobs from relocating to Mexico, but it won praise from Democrats who have routinely voted against prior trade agreements.

“Twenty-six years ago, I opposed NAFTA with every bone in my body,” said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. “I never thought the day would come when we would have the opportunity to right some of the wrongs in that agreement.”

Pelosi said the agreement was “light years” ahead of what the administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico. “We knew we could do better,” Pelosi said.

The original NAFTA phased out nearly all tariffs on goods produced and traded within North America. It was extraordinary because it linked two wealthy, developed countries with a poor, developing country. Since then, trade with Canada and Mexico has increased more rapidly than trade with most other countries.

Democrats for years have charged that NAFTA led to massive losses of high-paying manufacturing jobs in the U.S. as companies moved production to low-wage Mexico. Trump distinguished himself from free-trade Republicans in the presidential primary with his NAFTA-bashing rhetoric, and his administration got Canada and Mexico to negotiate a rewrite.

The International Trade Commission projected in April that the agreement would boost the economy by $68 billion and add 176,000 jobs six years after taking effect.

Some of the biggest impacts would be felt in the U.S. automotive industry. The agreement aims to see more cars produced where workers earn an average of at least $16 an hour.

The commission found that the new agreement would create 30,000 jobs in American auto parts plants. On the down side, the commission found the pact would increase the cost of pickup trucks and cars. That would hurt demand and reduce the number of jobs in factories that assemble cars by about 1,500.

Business and farm groups had been hitting the airwaves and the halls of Congress to get lawmakers to support the pact, putting pressure on Democrats to work with the administration even as labor unions remained wary that the new deal represented much of an improvement from NAFTA.

Trump, at times, seemed resigned to the assessment that the two sides would never reach a compromise. “She’s incapable of moving it,” Trump said a few weeks ago about Pelosi.

Behind the scenes, Trump’s lead negotiator, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, was working with House Democrats on changes to address their concerns. The agreement includes a process that could lead to inspections of factories and facilities in Mexico that are not living up to labor obligations.

It also secures more than $600 million for environmental problems in the NAFTA region. It scrapped giving pharmaceutical companies 10 years’ protection from cheaper competition in a category of ultra-expensive drugs called biologics, which are used to fight such illnesses as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

In the end, the AFL-CIO endorsed the pact, as did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other major business groups.

Critics said they understood the renegotiated trade deal was an improvement over NAFTA, but they said it wasn’t enough.

“American jobs will still flow to other countries,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J.

The deal gave Democrats a chance to show constituents they weren’t focused solely on impeachment, particularly first-term lawmakers such as Reps. Kendra Horn, D-Okla., and Joe Cunningham, D-S.C. They represent districts won by Trump in 2016.

“I promised the people of the low country I’d come to Washington to work with Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the White House and anyone else necessary to find bipartisan, common-sense solutions to issues impacting our district,” Cunningham said during debate. He said the bills’ passage “is a major step in that direction.”

Republicans made clear that they weren’t going to allow for an easy pivot.

“The bipartisan nature of this deal that we are here discussing today cannot cover up what happened on this floor last night,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.

Some Republicans also grumbled that Democrats took too long to get the agreement across the finish line, but many were quite happy with the result.

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., said the pact reminded him of when he would write a letter to Santa, and it would be answered with most of the presents he wanted on Christmas morning.

“This is certainly one of those times when the letter to Santa Claus actually got answered,” Kelly said.

___

AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

Court Voids ‘Obamacare’ Individual Mandate, Sidesteps Whole Law Issue

NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down “Obamacare’s” now-toothless requirement that Americans carry health insurance but sidestepped a ruling on the law’s overall constitutionality. The decision means the law remains in effect for now.

The 2-1 ruling handed down by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans means the ultimate fate of the rest of the Affordable Care Act including such popular provisions as protections for those with pre-existing conditions, Medicaid expansion and the ability for children under the age of 26 to remain on their parents’ insurance remains unclear.

The panel agreed with Texas-based U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s 2018 finding that the law’s insurance requirement, the so-called “individual mandate,” was rendered unconstitutional when Congress, in 2017, reduced a tax on people without insurance to zero.

The court reached no decision on the big issue — how much of the Affordable Care Act must fall along with the insurance mandate.

“It may still be that none of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, even after this inquiry is concluded. It may be that all of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate. It may also be that some of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, and some is not,” Judge Jennifer Elrod wrote.

The decision sends the case back to a judge who already ruled once to throw out the entire ACA but with some guidance. O’Connor has to be more specific about which parts of the law can’t be separated from the mandate, and also must take into account Congress’ decision to leave the rest of the law essentially unchanged when it reduced the penalty for not having insurance to zero, Elrod wrote.

In dissent, Judge Carolyn Dineen King said her colleagues were prolonging “uncertainty over the future of the healthcare sector.” King would have found the mandate constitutional, although unenforceable, and would have left the rest of the law alone.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is leading state efforts to defend the law, promised a quick appeal to the Supreme Court.

“For now, the President got the gift he wanted — uncertainty in the healthcare system and a pathway to repeal — so that the healthcare that seniors, workers and families secured under the Affordable Care Act can be yanked from under them,” Becerra said in a statement.

Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, which spearheaded the lawsuit seeking to throw out the ACA, applauded the court’s decision to declare the mandate unconstitutional.

“As the court’s opinion recognized, the only reason the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare in 2012 was Congress’ taxing power, and without the individual mandate’s penalty that justification crumbled,” Paxton wrote. “We look forward to the opportunity to further demonstrate that Congress made the individual mandate the centerpiece of Obamacare and the rest of the law cannot stand without it.”

President Donald Trump also applauded the decision, calling it a “win for all Americans.”

A legal analyst who has followed the health law from its early days said the ruling seems to indicate that the lower court judge who struck the entire statute down as unconstitutional overreached.

“The opinion suggests that Judge O’Connor went too far in invalidating the entire statute, and that he should have considered what Congress intended in 2017 when it zeroed out the mandate penalty,” said Tim Jost, a retired law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Jost supports the ACA.

The court’s ruling ensures “Obamacare” will remain a political issue during the 2020 election campaign, giving Democrats a line of attack against Trump and congressional Republicans. With the health law’s ultimate fate still in doubt, Democrats will argue that Republicans are trying to strip coverage away from 20 million Americans.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the ruling a “chilling threat” to those who rely on the Affordable Care Act.

All the Democratic presidential candidates favor expanding coverage to the remaining 27 million uninsured, although their ideas range from building on the Obama health law to replacing America’s mix of private and public insurance with a single plan run by the government.

The decision comes after the conclusion of sign-up season for ACA coverage in most states. Technical glitches over the weekend had led to an extension until early Wednesday. That means the court ruling will not affect enrollment for 2020.

The lawsuit followed congressional approval of a major tax cut in 2017, which included the reduction of the “Obamacare” tax on the uninsured to zero. The case came about because “Obamacare” opponents noted a splintered Supreme Court ruling of 2012 that upheld the law. In that decision, conservative justices had rejected the argument that Congress could require that everyone buy insurance. But Chief Justice John Roberts, joining four liberal justices, said Congress did have the power to tax those without insurance.

With no tax in effect, the Texas lawsuit argued, the so-called “individual mandate” was unconstitutional and the entire law must fall. Judge O’Connor agreed in his December 2018 ruling.

Supporters of the law said the reduction of the tax penalty to zero could be read as a suspension of the tax, which didn’t render the mandate unconstitutional. They said the structure for collecting a penalty from the uninsured remained in place.

They added that, even if the individual mandate was rendered unconstitutional by the tax cut bill, the rest of the law could be salvaged.

Congress had already failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, the law’s supporters noted. What happened in 2017, they contended in written arguments, is that Congress “chose to make the minimum coverage provision unenforceable — while leaving every other part of the ACA in place.”

___

Sherman and Alonso-Zaldivar contributed from Washington. AP Writer Kevin McGill in New Orleans also contributed to this report.

McConnell Blasts Trump Impeachment by House, Pledges Senate Action

WASHINGTON — The top Senate Republican on Thursday denounced the “most unfair” House impeachment of President Donald Trump and reassured Trump and his supporters that “moments like this are why the United States Senate exists.”

Signaling in the strongest terms yet that the GOP-controlled Senate will acquit Trump, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky declared that the House impeachment “risks deeply damaging the institutions of American government.”

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As for what the Senate should do, the Kentucky Republican said, “It could not be clearer which outcome would serve the stabilizing, institution-preserving, fever-breaking role for which the United States Senate was created and which outcome would betray it.”

McConnell described Trump’s impeachment as “the most rushed, least thorough and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history.”

Fighting back and using McConnell’s own words, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York then said on the Senate floor that the Republican leader was plotting the “most rushed, least thorough and most unfair” impeachment trial in history by declining to agree to call witnesses including former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, who declined to testify before the House.

“McConnell claimed the impeachment was motivated by partisan rage,” said Schumer. “This from the man who said proudly, ‘I am not impartial.’”

“What hypocrisy.”

McConnell accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of being afraid to send “their shoddy work product to the Senate” after she threw uncertainty into the impeachment process late Wednesday by refusing to say when she would send two impeachment articles to the Senate for a trial.

He said the Democratic-controlled House “has let its partisan rage at this particular president create a toxic new precedent that will echo well into the future.”

The House impeached Trump on two charges—abusing his power and obstructing Congress—stemming from his pressure on Ukraine to announce investigations of his political rival as he withheld U.S. aid

McConnell said the two articles failed to meet the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors and that the House simply impeached a political foe for an abuse of power offense that isn’t considered a crime.

“The framers built the Senate to provide stability,” McConnell said. “To keep partisan passions from boiling over. Moments like this are why the United States Senate exists.”

A trial in the Republican-controlled Senate would almost certainly result in Trump being acquitted of the charges.

In a news conference late Wednesday after the impeachment vote, Pelosi declined to say when she would send the articles to the Republican-led Senate. Until the articles are submitted, the Senate cannot hold the trial.

McConnell was meeting later Thursday with Schumer to begin negotiations on how to conduct next year’s Senate trial. The two leaders have a tense relationship and McConnell holds a tactical edge if he can keep his 53-member Senate majority united.

A day after his impeachment, Trump was quick to lash out at Pelosi.

“Now the Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. He claimed the timing of the trial was up to the Senate, and that if Democrats didn’t transmit the articles of impeachment “they would lose by Default!”

But there is no constitutional requirement on Pelosi to send them swiftly — or at all.

Pelosi said House Democrats could not name impeachment managers — House prosecutors who make the case for Trump’s conviction and removal from office — until they know more about how the Senate will conduct a trial.

“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi said. “And I would hope that that will be soon. … So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”

McConnell rejected a proposal earlier this week from Schumer, D-N.Y., to call several witnesses. McConnell also said that he is coordinating with the White House and declared that “I am not an impartial juror.”

Pelosi said that McConnell “says it’s OK for the foreman of the jury to be in cahoots with the lawyers of the accused. That doesn’t sound right to us.”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham blasted Pelosi’s move that would potentially delay the Senate trial, where she said Trump was sure to get a “fair shake” compared to the House.

In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Grisham said Pelosi’s announcement was “just another gimmick and more changing of the rules.”

Asked again if she could guarantee that she would send the articles to the Senate, Pelosi said at the news conference: “That would have been our intention.” But they will see what the Senate decides, she said.

“We are not having that discussion. We have done what we set out to do,” Pelosi said.

Complicating any decision to delay are House Democrats’ arguments in recent weeks that Trump’s impeachment was needed “urgently,” arguing his actions were a threat to Democracy and the fairness of the 2020 election.

Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, a member of Pelosi’s leadership team, said after her remarks that Democrats want impeachment proceedings that are “judicious and responsible and deliberative.”

He said that while Senate will decide its own procedures, “the speaker’s only point is before she sends it over she needs to understand what that is” because it will influence who the impeachment managers are.

Asked about never sending the articles over, Cicilline said, “I would not speculate that anyone’s even contemplating that.”

___

Associated Press writer Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.

President Trump Is Impeached

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday night, becoming only the third American chief executive to be formally charged under the Constitution’s ultimate remedy for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The historic vote split along party lines, much the way it has divided the nation, over the charges that the 45th president abused the power of his office by enlisting a foreign government to investigate a political rival ahead of the 2020 election. Then a majority of the House approved a second charge, that he obstructed Congress in its investigation.

The articles of impeachment, the political equivalent of an indictment, now go to the Senate for trial. If Trump is acquitted by the Republican-led chamber, as expected, he would have to run for reelection carrying the enduring mark of impeachment on his purposely disruptive presidency.

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Democrats led Wednesday night’s voting, framed in what many said was their duty to protect the Constitution and uphold the nation’s system of checks and balances. Republicans stood by their party’s leader, who has frequently tested the bounds of civic norms. Trump called the whole affair a “witch hunt,” a “hoax” and a “sham,” and sometimes all three.

The trial is expected to begin in January in the Senate, where a vote of two-thirds is necessary for conviction. While Democrats had the majority in the House to impeach Trump, Republicans control the Senate and few if any are expected to diverge from plans to acquit the president ahead of early state election-year primary voting.

Pelosi, once reluctant to lead Democrats into a partisan impeachment, now risks her majority and speakership to hold the president accountable.

“Today we are here to defend democracy for the people,” Pelosi said opening debate.

Trump, who began Wednesday tweeting his anger at the proceedings, scheduled an evening rally in Battle Creek, Michigan.

He pumped his fist before an enthusiastic crowd, boasted of “tremendous support” in the Republican Party and said, “By the way it doesn’t feel like I’m being impeached.”

What Pelosi called a sad and solemn moment for the country, coming in the first year that Democrats swept control of the House, unfolded in a caustic daylong session that showcased the nation’s divisions — not only along party lines, but also by region, race and culture.

The House impeachment resolution laid out in stark terms the two articles of impeachment against Trump stemming from his July phone call when he asked the Ukraine president for a “favor” — to announce it was investigating Democrats ahead of the 2020 election. He also pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to probe unsubstantiated corruption allegations against Joe Biden, the former vice president and 2020 White House contender.

At the time, Zelenskiy, a young comedian newly elected to politics, was seeking a coveted White House visit to show backing from the U.S. ally as it confronts a hostile Russia at its border. He was also counting on $391 million in military aid already approved by Congress. The White House delayed the funds, but Trump eventually released the money once Congress intervened.

Narrow in scope but broad in its charge, the resolution said the president “betrayed the nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections,” and then obstructed Congress’ oversight like “no president” in U.S. history.

“President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office,” it said.

Republicans argued that Democrats are impeaching Trump because they can’t beat him in 2020.

“This vote is about one thing, and one thing only: They hate this president,” said Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah. “They want to take away my vote and throw it in the trash.”

But Democrats warned the country cannot wait for the next election to decide whether Trump should remain in office because he has shown a pattern of behavior, particularly toward Russia, and will try to corrupt U.S. elections in 2020.

“The president and his men plot on,” said Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., of the Intelligence Committee that led the inquiry. “The danger persists. The risk is real.”

The outcome brings the Trump presidency to a milestone moment that has building almost from the time the New York businessman-turned-reality-TV host unexpectedly won the White House in 2016 amid questions about Russian interference in the U.S. election — and the rise of the “resistance.”

Democrats drew from history, the founders and their own experiences, as minorities, women and some immigrants to the U.S., seeking to honor their oath of office to uphold the constitution. Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., spoke in Spanish asking God to unite the nation. “In America,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., “no one is above the law.”

Republicans aired Trump-style grievances about what Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko called a “rigged” process.

“We face this horror because of this map,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Ala., before a poster of red and blue states. “They call this Republican map flyover country, they call us deplorables, they fear our faith, they fear our strength, they fear our unity, they fear our vote, and they fear our president.”

The political fallout from the vote will reverberate across an already polarized country with divergent views of Trump’s July phone call when Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Democrats in the 2016 election, Biden and his son, Hunter, who worked on the board of a gas company in Ukraine while his father was the vice president.

Trump has repeatedly implored Americans to read the transcript of the call he said was “perfect.” But the facts it revealed, and those in an anonymous whistleblower’s complaint that sparked the probe, are largely undisputed.

More than a dozen current and former White House officials and diplomats testified for hours. The open and closed sessions under oath revealed what one called the “irregular channel” of foreign policy run by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, which focused on investigating the Bidens and alternative theories of 2016 election interference.

The question for lawmakers was whether the revelations amounted to impeachable offenses to be sent to the Senate for a trial.

Few lawmakers crossed party lines without consequence. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., who is considering changing parties over his opposition to impeachment, sat with Republicans. Rep. Justin Amash, the Michigan conservative who left the Republican party and became an independent over impeachment, said: “I come to this floor, not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as an American.”

Beyond the impeachments of Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton, this first impeachment of the 21st century is as much about what the president might do in the future as what he did in the past. And unlike investigation of Richard Nixon, who resigned rather than face the House vote over Watergate, the proceedings against Trump are playing out in an America already of mixed views over Trump.

Rank and file Democrats said they were willing to lose their jobs to protect the democracy from Trump. Some newly elected freshman remained in the chamber for hours during the debate.

“This is not about making history, this is about holding a lawless president accountable,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I.

GOP Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia said of the Democrats: “You’ve been wanting to do this ever since the gentleman was elected.”

Top Republicans, including Rep. Devin Nunes on the Intelligence Committee, called the Ukraine probe little more than the low-budget sequel to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mueller spent two years investigating the potential links between Moscow and the Trump campaign, but testified in July that his team could not establish that Trump conspired or coordinated with Russia to throw the election. Mueller did say he could not exonerate Trump of trying to obstruct the investigation, but he left that for Congress to decide.

The next day, Trump called Ukraine. Not quite four months later, a week before Christmas, Trump was impeached.

___

Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly, Alan Fram and Andrew Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.

Chemical Weapons Watchdog Is Just an American Lap Dog

A spate of leaks from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international inspectorate created for the purpose of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention, has raised serious questions about the institution’s integrity, objectivity and credibility. The leaks address issues pertaining to the OPCW investigation into allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack civilians in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7, 2018. These allegations, which originated from such anti-Assad organizations as the Syrian Civil Defense (the so-called White Helmets) and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), were immediately embraced as credible by the OPCW, and were used by the United States, France and the United Kingdom to justify punitive military strikes against facilities inside Syria assessed by these nations as having been involved in chemical weapons-related activities before the OPCW initiated any on-site investigation.

The Douma incident was initially described by the White Helmets, SAMS and the U.S., U.K. and French governments as involving both sarin nerve agent and chlorine gas. However, this narrative was altered when OPCW inspectors released, on July 6, 2018, interim findings of their investigation that found no evidence of the use of sarin. The focus of the investigation quickly shifted to a pair of chlorine cylinders claimed by the White Helmets to have been dropped onto apartment buildings in Douma by the Syrian Air Force, resulting in the release of a cloud of chlorine gas that killed dozens of Syrian civilians. In March, the OPCW released its final report on the Douma incident, noting that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018,” that “this toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine” and that “the toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

Much has been written about the OPCW inspection process in Syria, and particularly the methodology used by the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), an inspection body created by the OPCW in 2014 “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.” The FFM was created under the direction of Ahmet Üzümcü, a career Turkish diplomat with extensive experience in multinational organizations, including service as Turkey’s ambassador to NATO. Üzümcü was the OPCW’s third director general, having been selected from a field of seven candidates by its executive council to replace Argentine diplomat Rogelio Pfirter. Pfirter had held the position since being nominated to replace the OPCW’s first director general, José Maurício Bustani. Bustani’s tenure was marred by controversy that saw the OPCW transition away from its intended role as an independent implementor of the Chemical Weapons Convention to that of a tool of unilateral U.S. policy, a role that continues to mar the OPCW’s work in Syria today, especially when it comes to its investigation of the alleged use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians in Douma in April 2018.

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Bustani was removed from his position in 2002, following an unprecedented campaign led by John Bolton, who at the time was serving as the undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs in the U.S. State Department. What was Bustani’s crime? In 2001, he had dared to enter negotiations with the government of Iraq to secure that nation’s entry into the OPCW, thereby setting the stage for OPCW inspectors to visit Iraq and bring its chemical weapons capability under OPCW control. As director general, there was nothing untoward about Bustani’s action. But Iraq circa 2001 was not a typical recruitment target. In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, the U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution under Chapter VII requiring Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including its chemical weapons capability, to be “removed, destroyed or rendered harmless” under the supervision of inspectors working on behalf of the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM.

The pursuit of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction led to a series of confrontations with Iraq that culminated in inspectors being ordered out of the country by the U.S. in 1998, prior to a 72-hour aerial attack—Operation Desert Fox. Iraq refused to allow UNSCOM inspectors to return, rightfully claiming that the U.S. had infiltrated the ranks of the inspectors and was using the inspection process to spy on Iraqi leadership for the purposes of facilitating regime change. The lack of inspectors in Iraq allowed the U.S. and others to engage in wild speculation regarding Iraqi rearmament activities, including in the field of chemical weapons. This speculation was used to fuel a call for military action against Iraq, citing the threat of a reconstituted WMD capability as the justification. Bustani sought to defuse this situation by bringing Iraq into the OPCW, an act that, if completed, would have derailed the U.S. case for military intervention in Iraq. Bolton’s intervention included threats to Bustani and his family, as well as threats to withhold U.S. dues to the OPCW accounting for some 22% of that organization’s budget; had the latter threat been implemented, it would have resulted in OPCW’s disbandment.

Bustani’s departure marked the end of the OPCW as an independent organization. Pfirter, Bolton’s hand-picked replacement, vowed to keep the OPCW out of Iraq. In an interview with U.S. media shortly after his appointment, Pfirter noted that while all nations should be encouraged to join the OPCW, “We should be very aware that there are United Nations resolutions in effect” that precluded Iraqi membership “at the expense” of its obligations to the Security Council. Under the threat of military action, Iraq allowed UNMOVIC inspectors to return in 2002; by February 2003, no WMD had been found, a result that did not meet with U.S. satisfaction. In March 2003, UNMOVIC inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq under orders of the U.S., paving the way for the subsequent invasion and occupation of that nation that same month (the CIA later concluded that Iraq had been disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction by the summer of 1991).

Under Pfirter’s leadership, the OPCW became a compliant tool of U.S. foreign policy objectives. By completely subordinating OPCW operations through the constant threat of fiscal ruin, the U.S. engaged in a continuous quid pro quo arrangement, trading the financial solvency of an ostensible multilateral organization for complicity in operating as a de facto extension of American unilateral policy. Bolton’s actions in 2002 put the OPCW and its employees on notice: Cross the U.S., and you will pay a terminal price.

When Üzümcü took over the OPCW’s reins in 2010, the organization was very much the model of multinational consensus, which, in the case of any multilateral organization in which the U.S. plays a critical role, meant that nothing transpired without the express approval of the U.S. and its European NATO allies, in particular the United Kingdom and France. Shortly after he took office, Üzümcü was joined by Robert Fairweather, a career British diplomat who served as Üzümcü’s chief of Cabinet. (While Üzümcü was the ostensible head of the OPCW, the daily task of managing the functioning of the OPCW was that of the chief of Cabinet. In short, nothing transpired within the OPCW without Fairweather’s knowledge and concurrence.)

Üzümcü and Fairweather’s tenure at the OPCW was dominated by Syria, where, since 2011, the government of President Bashar Assad had been engaged in a full-scale conflict with a foreign-funded and -equipped insurgency whose purpose was regime change. By 2013, allegations emerged from both the Syrian government and rebel forces concerning the use of chemical weapons by the other side. In August 2013, the OPCW dispatched an inspection team into Syria as part of a U.N.-led effort, which included specialists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N. itself, to investigate allegations that sarin had been used in attack on civilians in the town of Ghouta. While the mission found conclusive evidence that sarin nerve agent had been used, it did not assign blame for the attack.

Despite the lack of causality, the U.S. and its NATO allies quickly assigned blame for the sarin attacks on the Syrian government. To forestall U.S. military action against Syria, the Russian government helped broker a deal whereby the U.S. agreed to refrain from undertaking military action if the Syrian government joined the OPCW and subjected the totality of its chemical weapons stockpile to elimination. In October 2013, the OPCW-U.N. Joint Mission, created under the authority of U.N. Security Council resolution 2118 (2103), began the process of identifying, cataloging, removing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. This process was completed in September 2014 (in December 2013, the OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work in Syria).

If the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons was an example of the OPCW at its best, what followed was a case study of just the opposite. In May 2014, the OPCW created the Fact-Finding Mission, or FFM, charged with establishing “facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.” The FFM was headed by Malik Ellahi, who served as head of the OPCW’s government relations and political affairs branch. The appointment of someone lacking both technical and operational experience suggests that Ellahi’s primary role was political. Under his leadership, the FFM established a close working relationship with the anti-Assad Syrian opposition, including the White Helmets and SAMS.

In 2015, responsibility for coordinating the work of the FFM with the anti-Assad opposition was transferred to a British inspector named Len Phillips (another element of the FFM, led by a different inspector, was responsible for coordinating with the Syrian government). Phillips developed a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS and played a key role in OPCW’s investigation of the April 2017 chemical incident in Khan Shaykhun. By April 2018, the FFM had undergone a leadership transition, with Phillips replaced by a Tunisian inspector named Sami Barrek. It was Barrek who led the FFM into Syria in April 2018 to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use at Douma. Like Phillips, Barrek maintained a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS.

Once the FFM wrapped up its investigation in Douma, however, it became apparent to Fairweather that it had a problem. There were serious questions about whether chlorine had, in fact, been used as a weapon. The solution, brokered by Fairweather, was to release an interim report that ruled out sarin altogether, but left the door open regarding chlorine. This report was released on July 6, 2018. Later that month, both Üzümcü and Fairweather were gone, replaced by a Spaniard named Fernando Arias and a French diplomat named Sébastien Braha. It would be up to them to clean up the Douma situation.

The situation Braha inherited from Fairweather was unenviable. According to an unnamed OPCW official who spoke with the media after the fact, two days prior to the publication of the interim report, on July 4, 2018, Fairweather had been paid a visit by a trio of U.S. officials, who indicated to Fairweather and the members of the FFM responsible for writing the report that it was the U.S. position that the chlorine cannisters in question had been used to dispense chlorine gas at Douma, an assertion that could not be backed up by the evidence. Despite this, the message that Fairweather left with the OPCW personnel was that there had to be a “smoking gun.” It was now Braha’s job to manufacture one.

Braha did this by dispatching OPCW inspectors to Turkey in September 2018 to interview new witnesses identified by the White Helmets, and by commissioning new engineering studies that better explained the presence of the two chlorine cannisters found in Douma. By March, Braha had assembled enough information to enable the technical directorate to issue its final report. Almost immediately, dissent appeared in the ranks of the OPCW. An engineering report that contradicted the findings published by Braha was leaked, setting off a firestorm of controversy derived from its conclusion that the chlorine cannisters found in Douma had most likely been staged by the White Helmets.

The OPCW, while eventually acknowledging that the leaked report was genuine, explained its exclusion from the final report on the grounds that it attributed blame, something the FFM was not mandated to do. According to the OPCW, the engineering report in question had been submitted to the investigation and identification team, a newly created body within the OPCW mandated to make such determinations. Moreover, Director General Arias stood by the report’s conclusion that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018.”

Arias’ explanation came under attack in November, when WikiLeaks published an email sent by a member of the FFM team that had participated in the Douma investigation. In this email, which was sent on June 22, 2018, and addressed to Robert Fairweather, the author noted that, when it came to the Douma incident, “[p]urposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous.” The author of the email, who had participated in drafting the original interim report, noted that the original text had emphasized that there was insufficient evidence to support this conclusion, and that the new text represented “a major deviation from the original report.” Moreover, the author took umbrage at the new report’s conclusions, which claimed to be “based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives detected in environmental samples.” According to email’s author “They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.” In short, the OPCW had cooked the books, manufacturing evidence from thin air that it then used to draw conclusions that sustained the U.S. position that chlorine gas had been used by the Syrian government at Douma.

Arias, while not addressing the specifics of the allegations set forth in the leaked email, recently declared that it is “the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to express subjective views,” noting that “I stand by the independent, professional conclusion” presented by the OPCW about the Douma incident. This explanation, however, does not fly in the face of the evidence. The OPCW’s credibility as an investigative body has been brought into question through these leaks, as has its independent character. If an organization like the OPCW can be used at will by the U.S., the United Kingdom and France to trigger military attacks intended to support regime-change activities in member states, then it no longer serves a useful purpose to the international community it ostensibly serves. To survive as a credible entity, the OPCW must open itself to a full-scale audit of its activities in Syria by an independent authority with inspector general-like investigatory powers. Anything short of this leaves the OPCW, an organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to world peace, permanently stained by the reality that it is little more than a lap dog of the United States, used to promote the very conflicts it was designed to prevent.

Accusations of Anti-Semitism Against Bernie Sanders Draw Fire

Progressives are taking the initiative to destroy and defeat accusations that Sen. Bernie Sanders, a frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is running or at the least tolerating an anti-Semitic primary campaign—accusations that come while the right-wing sharpens its knives for the Vermont senator as he rises in the polls.

Attacks against Sanders began last week after U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn suffered a humiliating defeat that some observers believe was helped by years of attacks claiming he and his left-leaning British party were anti-Semitic. At that point, columnist Peter Beinart wrote for The Forward on Tuesday, the die was cast.

“Given Bernie Sanders’ endurance as a top-tier presidential contender, and his support for Palestinian rights, it was almost inevitable that conservatives would start labeling his campaign anti-Semitic,” wrote Beinart. “Last week’s election in Britain—and the alleged similarities between Sanders and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn—provided the pretext.”

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It happened quickly. On December 13, right-wing outlet The Washington Examiner reporter Tiana Lowe—whose recent praise for her Nazi-collaborating Chetnik grandfather was noted by a number of observers—wrote that the Sanders campaign “has an anti-Semitism problem.”

The smear provoked a sharp reaction from Sanders speechwriter David Sirota.

“As a Jewish person, my response to this is simple,” Sirota tweeted, “anyone accusing Bernie of anti-Semitism—and anyone publishing this shit—is a total asshole.”

Bernie is a Jewish person fighting Trump’s hate-filled ideology. His family was murdered in the Holocaust because they were Jewish.

As a Jewish person, my response to this is simple: anyone accusing Bernie of antisemitism — and anyone publishing this shit — is a total asshole. pic.twitter.com/3Hq9nH3RIf

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 14, 2019

Lowe’s piece was joined by articles in other right-wing publications, including conservative magazine Commentary‘s online editor Noah Rothman. Cartoonist and activist Eli Valley hit back at Rothman on social media, saying, “It’s happening—elated over the U.K., the minority of American Jews that has waged war on the progressive Jewish majority for generations is starting to pull the same shtick with the most inspiring Jewish politician of our time.”

“We need to shut this shit down early,” Valley added.

That sentiment was shared by journalist Kate Aronoff, who, in a call to action, urged supporters of the senator’s campaign to fight against the attacks.

“Let’s nip this shit in the bud, team,” tweeted Aronoff.

Let's nip this shit in the bud, team. My latest for @guardian on Zayde Bernie and the craven slugs calling his campaign anti-Semitic: https://t.co/wrQxHIHLeg

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) December 18, 2019

Aronoff pushed back on the accusations against Sanders, a Jewish man who had members of his family murdered in the Holocaust, for The Guardian Wednesday. In her essay, Aronoff argues that smearing Sanders as an anti-Semite or tolerant of anti-Semitism is rooted in both the senator’s support for Palestinian rights and seeking shameless partisan advantage from his opponents on the right.

“Before they snowball into something worse, the right’s allegations of antisemitism against the left—and the first Jew within striking distance of the White House, at that—should be called out for what they are,” wrote Aronoff, “cynical politiking in service of politicians who will put more Jews in danger.”

David Klion, news editor of left-wing Jewish magazine Jewish Currents, which recently published a piece on fighting anti-Semitism authored by Sanders, told Common Dreams that attacks on Sanders are about more than just the senator’s campaign.

“Sanders represents a strain of American Jewish identity that is profoundly threatening to the mainstream Jewish establishment—one rooted in social justice and solidarity with all oppressed peoples, rather than in Zionism, religious conservatism, or corporate-friendly politics,” said Klion. “Discrediting him as a Jew is really about discrediting left-wing Jews in general.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday attempted to make the case that Sanders’ friendship and political allyship with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Muslim woman of color, was evidence of a connection between the senator and anti-Semitic elements in the Democratic Party—an accusation against Omar of anti-Jewish bias.

In a blistering retort to Cruz, Never Again Action’s Sophie Ellman-Golan both called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to condemn Cruz and put the attacks on Sanders in context.

“Bernie Sanders’ willingness to criticize Israel, his support for Palestinian rights—these are not anti-Semitic, and I’ll be dammed if we let right-wing Christian evangelicals and right-wing members of our own community redefine them as such,” said Ellman-Golan.

Left-wing activist Twitter account Jewish Worker agreed.

“They’re not attacking Bernie because of anti-Semitism,” said Jewish Worker. “They’re attacking Bernie because of anti-Palestinianism. Don’t let them confuse you.”