Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 100
April 19, 2018
Rudy Giuliani joins Trump’s legal team
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump who earned a name for himself prosecuting mobsters, told The Washington Post on Thursday that he has joined the president's legal team dealing with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” Giuliani told The Post.
Giuliani, who joins a legal team that has struggled to recruit new members to its ranks, told The Post he has been speaking with the president for weeks about joining his legal team. The former mayor said he would work alongside Trump’s current attorneys, Jay Sekulow and Ty Cobb.
Giuliani will soon take a leave from his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, The Post reports. The former mayor also said he recently formalized his decision, having discussed it over dinner last week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Giualini’s entry into Trump’s personal legal team won’t be the first time he’ll cross paths with Mueller. Indeed, Giuliani has previously worked with Mueller at the Justice Department and while he was the mayor of New York. At that time, Mueller was at the FBI.
“[Giuliani] hopes [his relationship with] Mueller can help bring the investigation to conclusion, saying it ‘needs a little push ... maybe a couple of weeks,’” CNN's Dana Bash reports.
just talked to Giuliani who said his role on Trump team is limited. He worked with Mueller at DOJ & as NYC Mayor (Mueller at FBI) He hopes knowing Mueller can help bring the investigation to conclusion, saying it "needs a little push." How soon? "maybe a couple of weeks"
— Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN) April 19, 2018
Giuliani and Trump talked on Thursday about a legal strategy moving forward, along with Sekulow, whom Giuliani called a “good friend,” according to The Post. Giuliani also told The Post that he and Cobb spoke on Wednesday.
When asked whether Trump has made a final decision on whether to sit for an interview with Mueller and his team, Giuliani said, "It’s too early for me to say that."
Trump has been debating for weeks whether to do so, shifting between wanting to meet with Mueller to moving away from the idea, especially after the FBI raided the home and offices of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, this month.
Giuliani also declined to discuss whether Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who has been under scrutiny from conservatives and oversees the Russia probe, could soon be fired by President Trump.
“I’m not involved in anything about those issues. My advice on Mueller has been this: He should be allowed to do his job, he’s entitled to do his job,” Giuliani told The Post.
Trump has reportedly raised the possibility of nominating Giuliani to be attorney general in July. Many top white-collar lawyers, such as Theodore Olson, have declined Trump's offers to join his personal legal team.
In late March, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough expressed incredulity that President Trump had been unable to find a leading lawyer to represent him in the Mueller's investigation. He pointed out that while the job of representing the president of the U.S. is "the dream of a lifetime for any attorney," few lawyers were willing to defend a client who would lie and ignore their advice, tarnish their reputation and then fail to pay the final bill.
"It is very clear, and we've heard it around Washington, we heard [GOP lawyer] Ted Olson talk about it — nobody wants to be this guy's lawyer," Scarborough said. "They don't want to be his lawyer, because first of all, he doesn't pay his bills. And secondly, he lies to lawyers all the time. They can't trust him going into court."
Scarborough's comments came after John Dowd, President Trump's lead lawyer on the Russia probe, resigned. Dowd allegedly quit Trump's legal team amid disagreements on handling the response to the Russia investigation, according to CNN.
“Scandal” series finale: Closing the door on a White House fantasy
Getty/Chris Kleponis/ABC/Richard Cartwright
To reflect on ABC’s “Scandal” on the occasion of its series finale and say that its White House operates like a well-oiled machine in comparison to its real-world counterpart, sounds flat-out nuts. It’s also not too far from the truth.
The Oval Office of Hillary Clinton stand-in Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young), like the administration of her ex-husband Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) is a tangled web made of puppet string. Some of that thread is spun by their adversaries – which at various points refers to each other – and some they’ve unspooled themselves.
Between both and yet not quite at the center, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) sits as both game-master and servant of republic, the controller who struggled and quite publicly failed to fully grasp command. At the series beginning she was Fitz’s secret lover and the bane of Mellie’s existence. Now she’s her staunchest ally, ready to tumble off a cliff in defense of the first female president.
Much has changed since 2012, when “Scandal” debuted. But as the thwarted Democratic hopes of 2016 and the nightmare sideshow that is Donald Trump’s administration shows us, much more has not. Women still struggle to gain equal consideration at all levels of power and in all realms. Only lately has this long-standing truth been acknowledged along with the admission, still waiting to be backed up with action, that society’s acceptance of patriarchy must shift.
Series creator Shonda Rhimes was very upfront about her support of Clinton’s candidacy in the 2016 presidential election and wrote a parallel campaign cycle into “Scandal.” But when Clinton didn’t win, Rhimes was forced to recalibrate the outcome of the show’s election and, ultimately its endgame.
“Scandal," which airs its finale on Thursday at 10 p.m., was never going to serve as a fantasy alternative to a disappointing real world presidency, in the way “The West Wing” was credited for doing during the eight years George W. Bush was in office. In this era of reboots, you may be pained to hear that NBC series’ creator Aaron Sorkin has shot down the hope of a revival. For now.
Not even the White House of fellow ABC drama “Designated Survivor” serves as an escape. And that series shows us what happens when a decent and honorable man who has the presidency thrust upon him. Of course, his presidency is held in place by the derring-do of action heroes wearing the shields of the government agencies, operatives working in the full light of the sun. But still.
Of course, “Scandal” was never about any particular election, or the intricacies of governance. It’s a long story about power. Indeed, Rhimes used both Olivia and her father Rowan (Joe Morton, who will be missed in this role) to state hard truths about power, even if those who could benefit the most from that wisdom probably weren't watching.
Take this gem from the penultimate episode: “If you have to tell me how powerful you are, you ain’t nobody!" he tells his agent Jake (Scott Foley). "You got nothing! You have nooooo power! Real power is silent. Real power is hidden. Real power was there all along. Real power cannot be gained and can never be lost. It is not a commodity. It is who you are.”
Mellie Grant, in her way, has a sense of this. She eventually ascends to the office of the president, unlike Clinton. The challenges she faces in the final season aren’t all too unbelievable, either. Not only is Mellie forced to deal with a cancer in her administration, in the form of her vice president Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) but cancer within that cancer: the “Scandal” Deep State organ as B613, a spy agency that is the show's de facto shadow government.
That such a turn doesn’t seem totally unreal in these days of in-fighting between the actual U.S. president and government intelligence agencies is astonishing, frankly.
“Scandal” began as a show about the behind-closed-door workings of a presidency, not to mention a tortured affair and a dead political marriage, but it ends as something else. A spy thriller, in part, also a soap where the fancy mansion happens to be located at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
But Rhimes designed “Scandal” to be more devious, ferocious and quietly dangerous than all of this from its first episode. Olivia Pope and her gladiators aren’t afraid to bloody their knuckles to get what they want and what their version of power, the one she used to say is run by the “white hats” of the world, needs to keep going. They make deep state conspiracies and counter-conspiracies look nearly heroic.
The public is abuzz about whether a certain intelligence dossier is real and the possible existence of other “kompromat.” Our former F.B.I. director is making the rounds to promote his new book and telling various journalists and talk show hosts that he cannot say, with certainty, that our president didn’t hire Russian hookers to urinate on a hotel bed in Moscow.
Now, compare that to Rhimes’ fictional subplot in which power-hungry, Illuminati-level spooks are running the world from inside a forgotten space under the White House and are, effectively, the executive branch of the government. That is now totally plausible.
And yet, the world of “Scandal” doesn’t seem to be a place where the public is at each other's throats. It’s deeply partisan, but presumably not holding its breath at the thought the world might end. Or maybe the “Scandal” version of the public chooses to drown its sorrows in red wine and popcorn. Maybe the goalpost of abnormal has moved on the drama’s audience.
Could it be that Rhimes’ Washington D.C., with its crazy body count and hot-and-frigid crises, is somewhat better than ours? Not really.
The White House of Fitz, Mellie and Olivia remains a swamp full of vipers capable of operating in land and water. Some might say that much is consistent with the inner workings of the real Washington. But the administration officials and “un”-officials in “Scandal” operate with a level of malignant sophistication we’re not seeing in the current White House.
The White House and Washington of “Scandal” is anything but ideal. But it is an odd notion to realize that given the fresh frights served up on a daily basis by the actual president, that these fictional versions who have been accessories to fraud or even committed murder, might be preferable.
Mind you, what continues to hook “Scandal” viewers is that one-two caress of power and sex. Rhimes’ treated these time-honored plot devices as intoxicants as opposed to journeys toward a desirable ending. For Olivia, romance is a hunger too dangerous to completely swoon into. The endlessly quotable Rowan bludgeoned into her that love is deceptive and illusory, a weakness.
And yet, for all of his brutal lessons, the one that ends up determining how Olivia's story comes to a close is that shunning love isn't the same as being heartless. If there are no more white hats, he poses, if the deck is always stacked, and if everyone you love is a monster, there is in fact someone worth saving. The answer is, everyone.
Our current commander-in-chief would likely posit that the only person worth saving is oneself. That, in the end, is the difference between the actual president and this imperfect and seductive fantasy to which we're saying goodbye.
A murder mystery and an author’s dark obsession in “Love and Death In the Sunshine State”
Erin Shaw/Algonquin Books
Cutter Wood wasn't a true crime obsessive. He wasn't the sort of man who could rattle off his favorite unsolved murders and disappearances. He was a graduate student studying in Iowa, whose mother just happened to send him a newspaper clipping about a suspicious motel fire on Anna Maria Island, In Florida.
The blaze — and concurrent investigation of its missing owner, Sabine Musil-Buelher, — intrigued Wood, who had been a guest there a few months before. And that small connection drew Wood into a mystery that would encompass nearly ten years of his life, involve three compelling suspects and form the basis for his haunting debut, "Love and Death In the Sunshine State."
Salon spoke recently with Wood about the small town crime that fascinated him, about writing what it feels like to die and in finding the humanity even in a person who commits the darkest deed.
Your mother sent you this newspaper report and you almost immediately got sucked in. Why did this crime resonate with you at that moment in your life that it did?
In some ways I could never truly understand why I went down [to Florida]. I received that article. It just seemed strange that two weeks after this murder — it was most likely a murder — someone would then still feel so roiled inside that they would feel obligated to go and set fire to the motel. That really, really came into it.
Then there were all these tips and leads coming into the sheriff's office after the woman went missing. They were just so peculiar. It's this little island, and people were really having these hallucinations. They saw her everywhere. They saw her at the Goodwill and the Salvation Army, they saw her at a bar with a man dressed like a pimp. They saw her looking disheveled and upset. They saw her at the orthodontist's office. They saw her at the Sarasota International Airport boarding a plane. One woman I spoke with was totally confident that Sabine was going to communicate from the afterlife with her through the shape of her pet parrot. Part of my original interest was really just trying to figure out what was going on in this community,that they were filling this place where this woman had been with all of these kind of strange hopes and desires and reactions.
But you were also going through your own things in your life that that drew you to this. You could have written a book that was just straightforward reportage, but you didn't.
I was interviewing a number of people, in particular interviewing Sabine’s boyfriend, William Cumber, about their relationship. At the same time, I had just moved in with the woman who was then my girlfriend, now my wife. A lot of the same issues that they were having were ones that I thought were reflected in my own life. First of all, just talking with William Cumber made me reflect on these things. Then secondly, I felt like if I was going to subject him to this scrutiny, I had to turn the camera back on myself and subject myself to the same scrutiny. Then you became part of the story because it is such a small community, and you developed this relationship with one of the prime suspects. It's still strange to me to say that I have a relationship with William Cumber, who was one of the suspects. I've got a big box full of letters here, and there's bound to be something that develops between you. It’s not something I'm totally comfortable with.
What was it like in your experience living this in real time? You maybe believed certain things about the way that events transpired, and then in the course of events found out, no, actually, things that I heard, things that I believed were entirely different.
The strangest thing about this entire project was that the day I sent what I thought was the final manuscript to my agent. I sent it maybe at 10:00 in the morning, and at 10:15 I hopped on the computer and there'd been a confession.
At that point in time, I had become close enough to people down there. I was so emotionally shocked when the confession occurred just because there had been this threat of a trial for a long time, but it seemed like it was never going to happen. There was no body. There was still no murder weapon. There was still really no defined motive. It really seemed like a long shot that there ever be any kind of resolution. I'd kind of written an entire book with that presumption and I was okay with that. I thought that that open-endedness was not a terrible thing. Then to send it out and 15 minutes later find out that everything has been clapped shut. I was really, really struggling.
I would imagine both professionally and personally.
I definitely spent years writing something and putting together the sequence of events, and even if they're somewhat or largely confirmed, it was still weird to see it all suddenly play out so quickly.
I want to ask you about something you did which was very, very bold. You go into the experience of the murder from the point of view of the victim and also from the point of view of the murderer. That's a very unusual device. You get into that experience of what it would feel like to be murdered. I wonder how you did that. There must have been intense.
It certainly is a part of the book that I almost always planned to take away eventually. You write all these different things and see what happens. You don't really have a concrete idea. It was something that I realized was a big decision and I wasn't at first sure if I was prepared to make that decision.
I had all of this data on what would have happened, photographs of her apartment and all these very general things. I also had done lots of research about — it's painful to talk about — what are the experiences of dying? What is the physical bodily experience? I wrote a lot of that before the confession happened, before we knew exactly what had happened. In fact, I wrote just tons of different versions. At that point in time I had no idea of exactly how the murder had occurred. It was just too gruesome that I kept dialing it back and dialing it back to the point that I thought it felt palpable to me. Then of course, when the confession occurred, it turned out that the most recent version was in fact the real one. I thought it was important to keep those perspectives in there because for me, a lot of the book is about not giving preference to a single perspective. That's kind of the elemental difficulty of a relationship. I felt like I needed to do that there.
And then to get into the baffling experience of committing the murder as well, the surprising aspects of what it would feel like to kill somebody.
I went down and was able to just sit down with the man who confessed the murder and we spent probably close to a week talking. It gave me the full breakdown of everything from the moment he first met Sabine to what it was like to to roll her body up in a sheet and bury her. It was one of the strangest and definitely most difficult things in my life doing that. I can't think of really many times when you are required by this thing you've gotten into to go through that experience, to sit down and have someone tell you what it's like to murder.
I would imagine that really, really gets in your head.
I can't say that I understood what he was going through or even exactly why he did it. But I knew there was more to him than simply that he was a murderer.
It is easy to kind of turn a real experience of violence into entertainment. To forget that the victim had a life, was a fully realized person, and that the murderer was as well. The person who commits a crime is also someone who was somebody’s child, who maybe had hopes and dreams, and who then committed terrible acts.
I feel like it's dangerous, as a person, that it’s dangerous to society, to ignore that murderers are also often people, and these things don't just come out of nowhere. That was definitely a big thing that was on my conscience and my consciousness while I was working on this. I wanted to make sure that this is a story about human beings.
Without in any way blaming the victim or making excuses for the murderer, but seeing it as a complicated story that has humanity in it. What's it like now in the aftermath of that? Where are you now within this story that has had a resolution?
I got into this thing when I was 24 and didn't expect it to be very a life-consuming thing. I thought the first time I'd just write a short essay about the way these people on this island had been affected by this. It turned into this multi-year project and involved going down to Florida all the time and driving up to prisons and jails, interviewing people and going to detectives. That’s just my way of saying I had no idea what I was getting into and I'm still not sure what the full ramifications of it are. I would love to never write anything this dark again. It took a toll on me very much emotionally, just terrible dreams and the stress of wanting to make sure you weren't doing something that would really hurt somebody's feelings or damage their lives in any unnecessary way. I'd like to move on to something a little bit lighter.
Did this book turn you into a true crime person now?
It's funny though because I get the allure. All through this process I've been trying to understand what that allure is and why I feel it. I guess as a kid, I remember going to the library and finding Sherlock Holmes on the shelf and not even making it to the checkout counter. I just stood there and read the book cover to cover, because I was so engrossed. It’s not even like that's fantastic literature, but there is something captivating about it. It's not as though it doesn't exist somewhere in me, but definitely I feel like the thing that motivated me was just wanting to describe the life of a relationship, what it's like for two people to fall apart or stay together.
It's really haunting because it is a human story. It's not just a story about a crime. It's a story about a community and about a woman and about a killer and this confluence of events in which you do feel the almost cruel randomness of it.
It's just made it hard for me to read the paper. Especially just because that part of Florida, when I talk to reporters down there, it's like, “This is not that crazy of a crime. There are people getting chopped up and stuffed in sewer drains all the time.”
Sure, because Florida.
It's a disconcerting way to look at society.
That there is a certain degree of humanity or pathos in true crime that really fascinates me. Yours is a story about a person who becomes enmeshed in all sides of it — from the victim to the perpetrator — and what happens when you find yourself at that crossroads. It makes you confront uncomfortable feelings about the perpetrators.
People do things, and I include myself in this, that they don't understand. Maybe for reasons that are very dim and historical. That to me is a fascinating question — why do we the incomprehensible things we do?
Samantha Bee blasts Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “His whole show is just an hour-long list of lies”
TBS
It was the story that rocked politics last week: Sean Hannity, the poster face of Fox News, was unmasked in a federal court hearing as the mystery third client of President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
The news also ricocheted across the media industry, as an obvious conflict of interest held by the network's highest-rated star was suddenly on display for all of America to see.
"His whole show is just an hour-long list of lies and conspiracy theories," Samantha Bee said as she attacked Hannity for his supporting role in the "fake news" epidemic on "Full Frontal" Wednesday night. "People think it's news because he doesn't sweat as much as Alex Jones, and because he's on a channel that calls itself 'news.'"
But one lingering question remained unanswered, and Bee really went there on behalf of her country last night. "Why the f**k did Sean Hannity, the guy who made $36 million last year retain a graduate of the actual worst law school in the country, a guy who's whole business models seems to be built around blackmailing mistresses?"
Cohen is a graduate of Western Michigan University's Cooley Law School, which was indeed ranked as the worst American law school of 2017 by "The Faculty Lounge." "Cooley accepted 85.6 percent of applicants, far and away the highest acceptance rate in the country," according to the publication.
In addition to Hannity and Trump, Cohen also represented former RNC Deputy Finance Chair Elliott Broidy, and allegedly arranged a $1.6 million hush payment to a former Playboy model who had an abortion after his client impregnated her in an extramarital affair.
But Bee quickly overruled the possibility of the Fox News star having a mistress, too. "No one would f**k you," she said, looking straight into the camera as she spoke to Hannity. "You must have done something so much worse."
With that, Bee implored the questionable ethics regularly used on Hannity's "news" show to lob a conspiracy theory of her very own: "Is Sean Hannity a serial killer?"
"Now, I know what you're thinking: You can't just throw together a bunch of scary buzzwords and out of context clips to support an outrageous conclusion," she paused to tell her audience. "And, normally I would agree with you, but you know who does that all the time? Sean Hannity."
A graphic behind Bee then showed six signs that a person could be a serial killer: bed-wetting, low self-esteem, average intellect, cruelty to animals, bad with women and obsession with fire. Then, through a deceitfully-spun web of editing, she reached an outrageous conclusion – and promised more would come.
"That is totally unedited footage of his madness. OK, well we did edit it," Bee conceded. "But only because the way he stokes resentment against people of color was just too scary."
At the conclusion of Bee's segment, the comedian seemingly accidentally connected the dots regarding why Hannity might have reached out to Cohen for legal advice in the first place. Does it really have to do with real estate, as the Fox News host has claimed? Watch the full segment below to analyze Bee's hypothesis for yourself.
The week of bombshell Sean Hannity reveals is about to get even bigger: we've got a very real scoop that is Very Real™.
**The Very Real trademark has nothing to do with any sort of reality or fact. pic.twitter.com/hbA70QHmLg
— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) April 19, 2018
Republicans reluctant to endorse Trump for 2020 are more than happy to help him now
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Some Republicans have been hesitant to support President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election bid — but they are still helping in other ways.
On Capitol Hill, some GOP lawmakers have been reluctant to throw their weight behind Trump's re-election bid just yet, but let's get real, a scenario in which the Republican Party chooses not to support its incumbent president is almost entirely inconceivable.
CNN caught up with several GOP lawmakers, some of whom were hesitant to express support for Trump's already launched 2020 campaign, and they either offered non-answers, deflections or insistence that the 2018 midterms are their only concern:
The comments highlight the continuing uneasiness many Republicans have over Trump's presidency, and the lingering questions about how the multiple legal battles the president is facing — from the allegations of hush money to silence an alleged affair with the porn actress Stormy Daniels, the raid of his personal attorney Michael Cohen's properties and special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation — will eventually shake out. And they also contradict Trump's oft-stated contention that the party has "never" been more united.
Texas Republican and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said, "I don't know what the world is going to look like," when asked if he'd support Trump's re-election campaign. "But let's say it's not something I've given any thought to."
When asked again days later he said, "I'm worried about the midterm election."
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson says "it's way too early" to be talking about Republican support for President Trump in 2020 https://t.co/amtEj3zFd8 pic.twitter.com/WviIT7NZ70
— New Day (@NewDay) April 19, 2018
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., insisted it was "too early to weigh in on who I might support" in 2020.
"That's a little loaded," Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan told CNN. "One: we need to make sure that he's actually moving forward and wants to go after this — so when he makes a declaration, then I think that would be a time to determine whether there are others (who) run or not."
But, it's important to note that appealing to a broader electorate has likely been part of the reason some Republicans have held off on throwing their weight behind the president, especially if they are up for reelection come November. Per CNN:
What puts Republicans on Capitol Hill in an awkward spot is the fact that Trump's approval numbers remain rock-solid among core GOP voters, standing at 85% among Republicans in a recent Quinnipiac poll. But if they side too closely with Trump, they risk alienating the broader electorate, where his poll numbers have been historically low.
It's his shaky standing that could prompt a Democratic wave in this fall's elections, with the GOP at serious risk of losing the House and potentially even the Senate. If that were to happen, some believe, Republicans in the Washington will begin to search for a new GOP candidate come 2020.
Regardless of any perceived uneasiness, the idea that Trump and the GOP are not tethered at the hip is a dubious one at best. A primary contender would face a very difficult battle against a president who, when he was still a candidate, steamrolled through and humiliated every establishment GOP candidate in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Even departing Republican senators who have openly lambasted the president for his impolite optics, off-the-cuff rhetoric or impulsivity are likely to support most of his agenda, if not all of it.
Even if the GOP were to distance itself from the president in the months and years to come, for whatever reason, it does not change the fact that conservative lawmakers have both deliberately left special counsel Robert Mueller vulnerable to impulsive executive action, and have actively sought to undermine his investigation. Nevertheless, if the party chose to move in a different direction than Trump come 2020, it's not as if it did anything to prevent a potential constitutional crisis. In fact, GOP lawmakers have allowed that possibility to become a reality in their refusal to protect Mueller and his investigation.
As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post opined:
The complication here is that Congress, of course, is supposed to exercise oversight over law enforcement. But there comes a point at which this oversight, when exercised in obvious bad faith, crosses over into something else — that is, overt and deliberate political interference — and good-faith observers need to be able to say so. As former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller put it to me: “The president is working with members of Congress to actively thwart his own Justice Department, because he wants it to stop investigating him.”
By the way: Does anyone think this would be happening if House Speaker Paul D. Ryan didn’t give this effort his tacit blessing? And is there any point at which Ryan, who is now the subject of much discussion summing up how his career will be remembered, will step in and put a stop to it?
The Republican Party has played a little game in which politicians have tried to have their cake and eat it too, by both assisting the Trump agenda and by attempting to act as if they are above his vengeful style of politics. The prime example of this is the "Never Trump" movement, of which figures such as Utah Senate hopeful Mitt Romney could once be considered leaders. But it didn't take long for him to publicly brag that he is even more of an immigration hawk than Trump is.
Bernie Sanders may sing Cardi B’s praises — but sex workers say he’s no ally
AP/Evan Agostin/Jae C. Hong
Sex workers learned Senator Bernie Sanders voted in favor of FOSTA-SESTA, two laws signed by President Trump last week to curb sex trafficking — and then praised Cardi B, a rapper who first attracted attention for being open about her career as a stripper on social media — and now they are upset.
Both bills — the House version known as FOSTA, which stands for Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, and its Senate companion, Stop Enabling Sex-Trafficking Act (SESTA) — were met with bipartisan support in Congress. On February 27, the House passed FOSTA with a final vote of 388-25. The Senate followed by passing SESTA by an overwhelming 97-2 margin.
In spite of the bipartisan support, the anti-trafficking legislation has received strong pushback from sex workers, whom advocates of the bill purport to be protecting, for its destabilizing and demoralizing effect.
Most recently, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has borne the brunt of that criticism, after he voted in favor of the measure.
Ginger Banks, a 27-year-old sex worker, decided to make a video to alert Sanders to the dangers the anti-trafficking bills are creating for the sex work industry.
Making a video for @SenSanders asking him to think about the dangers SESTA/FOSTA are creating for the sex work industry. If you would like to contribute a message to him record something and send it to gingerbanks3@gmail.com
Parkland survivor David Hogg rides wave of activism with book co-published with sister Lauren
Getty/Nicholas Kamm
Parkland activist David Hogg, 17, and his younger sister Lauren Hogg, 14, are writing a book about the Valentine's Day school shooting that turned high school students into national activists and launched the ensuing #NeverAgain movement. Their forthcoming book, "#NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line" will be published by Random House this June. "This book is their statement of purpose, and the story of their lives," Random House said. "It is the essential guide to the #NeverAgain movement."
Hogg is one of the most prominent student activists to emerge from this movement, and he announced the book deal on Twitter Wednesday. He wrote that the book "tells the story of the foundation of this movement for those we lost." He added that "Lauren and I will be using the money made from the book to help heal the community."
Today @lauren_hoggs and I are announcing our book #NeverAgain that tells the story of the foundation of this movement for those we lost. Lauren and I will be using the money made from the book to help heal the community. #NeverAgain out June 5th https://t.co/Vh2gWVWNGq
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) April 18, 2018
Lauren also shared the news and said that the book will detail "how we turned our grief into action and how we fight and speak out for those who no longer can. All proceeds going to healing Parkland and to prevent gun violence," she wrote on Twitter.
Hogg, as well as Emma González, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin and Alex Wind have been the most recognizable faces and voices of the #NeverAgain movement. They made the cover of Time Magazine and were honored on its Time 100 list. Former president Barack Obama penned the homage.
.@BarackObama: “By bearing witness to carnage, by asking tough questions and demanding real answers, the Parkland students are shaking us out of our complacency” #TIME100 https://t.co/LYe1trmpPv
— TIME (@TIME) April 19, 2018
Seared by memories of seeing their friends murdered at a place they believed to be safe, these young leaders don’t intimidate easily. They see the NRA and its allies—whether mealymouthed politicians or mendacious commentators peddling conspiracy theories—as mere shills for those who make money selling weapons of war to whoever can pay. They’re as comfortable speaking truth to power as they are dismissive of platitudes and punditry. And they live to mobilize their peers.
Given Hogg's visibility and his rebuke of the typical Republican line calling for "thoughts and prayers" as the answer to mass shootings, he has received substantial critique from right-wing commentators. Recently, he made headlines for being mocked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Twitter. He called for advertisers to boycott her show and more than 20 sponsors walked away from "The Ingraham Angle."
But a lesser-publicized critique has been the black and brown students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who feel neglected by the widespread media attention concentrated on Hogg and a handful of other, mostly white students there. The Time cover offers a one-dimensional view of the Parkland school, which is about 40 percent people of color.
Hogg and his visible activist peers have often expressed the importance of examining gun violence through a racial justice lens — a point Obama mentioned in his dedication to them. "As these young leaders make common cause with African Americans and Latinos—the disproportionate victims of gun violence—and reach voting age, the possibilities of meaningful change will steadily grow," he wrote.
But according to some of the black students at Parkland, the movement's frontrunners have done little to engage with their peers of color at home. While González invited black students from Chicago to Florida, for discussion and collaboration around gun violence activism, for some Stoneman Douglas students, this underscored the problem. "It hurts, because they went all the way to Chicago to hear these voices when we’re right here," Mei-Ling Ho-Shing, a 17-year-old black student at Parkland, told HuffPost. "We go to school with you every day."
#NeverAgain is still burgeoning, and for many, these young activists have been thrust into the fore with a task that seasoned policymakers and organizers have had little success with. So much of their journey is new territory, especially on such a grand stage. And there is much work to do. But a study of famous activists, like Angela Davis or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will underscore the importance of the collective and of amplifying a multitude of voices. Hopefully, with the Hogg siblings' book deal, that will resonate.
Men arrested at Philly Starbucks speak out: “This is something that has been going on for years”
ABC/Lorenzo Bevilaqua
Two black men arrived at a Philadelphia Starbucks for a meeting at 4:35 p.m. local time last week. Two minutes later, at 4:37 p.m., authorities were called to the scene. The men were arrested, placed in handcuffs, escorted out of the store and thrown into the back of a SWAT car.
Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, the two men who were arrested, appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday to tell their story publicly for the first time. The 23-year-old entrepreneurs said they came to Starbucks for a business meeting they believed would change their lives.
Nelson said he asked to use the restroom shortly after walking in, and when he was told it was for paying customers only, he did not realize it was a question that could have triggered his arrest. He thought nothing of a Starbucks employee coming up to the table he sat at with his business partner, Robinson, to ask if the men needed help. The pair declined the offer and explained that they were awaiting a business meeting. Robinson and Nelson were waiting for the third person to arrive when a white store employee called 911.
"I was thinking, they can't be here for us," Robinson said of the authorities. "It didn't really hit me what was going on – that it was real – until I was being double-locked with my hands behind my back."
Nelson and Robinson were arrested for trespassing. No charges were filed, but video footage of the incident went viral and provoked protests and also calls for boycotts.
Nelson said they had been working toward their business meeting for months. "We're days away from changing our whole entire situation, our lives, and you about to sit here telling me I can't do that? You're not doing that."
FULL INTERVIEW: "This is something that has been going on for years...everyone is blind to it."
Rashon Nelson & Donte Robinson, the 2 black men arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, speak out exclusively to @RobinRoberts: https://t.co/bIBmMGlwWN pic.twitter.com/IZekmHrWw2
— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 19, 2018
"I understand that rules are rules, but what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong," Robinson added.
On Monday, the two men met with Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, who personally apologized.
A lawyer for the men told "Good Morning America" that Starbucks has agreed to their proposal to enter mediation with a retired federal judge.
"I want to make sure this situation doesn't happen again," Robinson said. "I want for a young man – or young men – to not be traumatized by this and instead be motivated and inspired."
The store employee who called authorities is no longer working with the Starbucks. The company has not said under what circumstances she left.
Facing backlash about Nelson and Robinson's arrest, Starbucks announced it would close its 8,000 company-owned stores in the U.S. on May 29 to train workers about racial bias. In total, the training will be provided to about 175,000 employees.
Starbucks has not revealed details of the curriculum of its training program, but it will be developed with guidance from a team that includes former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit based in Montgomery, Ala.; Heather McGhee, president of Demos, a public policy think tank based in New York; and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, according to NBC News.
On Wednesday, Johnson and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz also met with Philadelphia church and community leaders. Rev. Gregory Holston, pastor of Janes Memorial United Methodist Church and executive director of Philadelphians Organized to Witness Empower and Rebuild (POWER), helped organize the meeting. He has protested the arrest of Nelson and Robinson and told CNNMoney he was "cautiously optimistic" about Starbucks' response.
A number of top companies, including Google and Coca-Cola, have conducted similar training for their employees in recent years.
Applebee's, for example, fired three employees and issued an apology over a Feb. 9 incident at a mall-based restaurant in Independence, Missouri, involving the racial profiling of two black customers who were falsely accused of not paying their bill.
In addition to the bias training, top Starbucks leaders, including the company's CEO, COO and board chair were pressed in the meeting on raising wages, hiring workers who have formerly been incarcerated and addressing the role that Starbucks has played in perpetuating gentrification, according to the Philadelphia Tribune.
"We are challenging them to take the lead in supporting racial justice organizations and speaking to other companies to join the cause," Holston told CNNMoney.
According to the outlet, Starbucks would not discuss the meeting but said through a spokesperson that "we are grateful to have these opportunities to talk with and listen to civic and community leaders this week in Philadelphia."
Despite the trauma, Robinson and Nelson are using this situation to highlight persisting racial inequality and bias across the country.
"I want to take this opportunity as a stepping stone, to really stand up and show your greatness," Nelson said. "And that you're not judged by the the color of your skin as our ancestors were – or anyone else. This is something that has been going on for years, and everyone is blind to it."
"Taking those actions and putting them in their place. And helping people understand that it's not a black people thing," he continued. "It's a people thing. That's what we want to see out of this – true change."
Republicans “whisper” about rumored Mike Pence/Nikki Haley presidential run
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
As President Donald Trump has found himself at odds with both Vice President Mike Pence and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, rumors of a potential pairing of the two on a future presidential ticket may be fueling tensions in the White House.
Jordan Fabian, a correspondent for The Hill, wrote Wednesday night: "[Some] say anyone suggesting that Pence, Haley and their subordinates are plotting a political future together are simply trying to cause problems and divide Trump from Haley."
But hints about such a pairing, despite official denials, have been emerging.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported: "Republicans close to the White House whisper about the prospect of an alliance between Ms. Haley and Vice President Mike Pence, possibly to run as a ticket in 2020."
Challenging a sitting member of your own party is a risky move, but it has happened in the past. If Haley and Pence are considering it, though, it may well be a contingency plan. Were Trump to run into serious legal trouble, resign, or be impeached before the 2020 election, the duo may be prepared to take the GOP's mantle — just in case.
The plan could also work even if Trump makes it through two full terms — the Pence/Haley or Haley/Pence ticket could be coming your way in 2024.
The Times reports, though, that Trump is wary of Haley's ambition. The ambassador publicly feuded with the White House this week over her comments Sunday that new sanctions would be forthcoming against Russia. The administration backed off any such plans, and officials tried to say Haley was "confused."
Trump also was reportedly unhappy with Pence recently when he learned the vice president wanted to hire Jon Lerner, a Haley aide. Lerner had previously campaigned against Trump, which the president finds unacceptable.
Pence and Haley were once seen as two of Trump's most favored allies in his administration. But nothing lasts forever — especially when it comes to jobs and good standing in the Trump administration.
The science behind tainted “synthetic marijuana”
AP
Three people died and more than 100 have been sickened in the past few weeks after taking synthetic cannabinoids, human-made compounds that target the same brain receptors as marijuana. Symptoms documented by poison centers — first mostly in the Midwest, and now in Maryland — include unexplained bruising, coughing up blood, bleeding from the nose and gums, blood in urine and feces, and excessively heavy menstruation.
An ongoing investigation has identified a likely culprit in the blood of those affected: rat poison, specifically brodifacoum. Commonly sold in hardware stores, it is a dangerous anticoagulant that can also cause brain damage.
These are the first known instances of rat poison being found in synthetic cannabinoids — and how the toxin got there is unknown. Douglas Feinstein, a neuroscientist and brodifacoum expert developing new antidotes to this substance at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says the symptoms in these cases indicate high levels of exposure. That makes accidental contamination unlikely, he says, and suggests the poison may have been introduced deliberately. “We don’t know the exact doses these people are getting, but it’s a lot,” says Feinstein, who is currently analyzing blood samples from those affected. “It could have been added intentionally to prolong the high.”
That may seem like the stuff of urban legends. But Feinstein cites previous case studies, reported in the scientific literature, of drug users deliberately ingesting rat poison to stay high longer when taking marijuana or cocaine. The toxin ties up liver enzymes that metabolize drugs, extending their effects.
Feinstein — whose work is funded by the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s CounterACT Program, tasked with developing countermeasures against chemical threats — added that malicious intent cannot be ruled out. He also speculated the drugs themselves could have exacerbated the poisoning if they dilated blood vessels.
Little is known about what synthetic cannabinoids themselves do to the body. Many of these compounds were developed experimentally in the 1980s by scientists studying the brain and trying to develop new analgesics. The ones now found in the U.S. are often made in China, and can be purchased online. Known by a wide variety of names including “Spice” and “K2,” they are typically sprayed on various herbs and sold as a smoking mixture, sometimes labeled as incense.
Authorities have arrested a convenience store owner in Chicago for allegedly selling some of the contaminated material linked to the current poisoning outbreak. Bruce Anderson, executive director of the Maryland Poison Center, says he was told the poisoned Maryland resident purchased the product that made them ill “at a local store.” He warns these substances are poorly understood, and can be perilous even when not tainted; the new cases comprise the latest chapter in an ongoing public health crisis, as people increasingly chase a buzz from numerous chemicals developed for scientific research and readily available on the internet or dark web. “None of these products have ever been tested on humans,” Anderson notes. “Using them is a spectacularly bad idea.”
Typically cheap and invisible to traditional drug screening, synthetic cannabinoids have been especially popular among the poor and incarcerated. A 2014 study flagged these chemicals as a popular drug of choice among military personnel dealing with substance abuse.
Poison control centers receive thousands of calls about synthetic cannabinoids every year, and they usually have nothing to do with rat poison. Emergency room doctors have documented a confusing array of problems among users: seizures, strokes, brain bleeding and heart attacks. In 2016 several dozen New Yorkers wound up in hospitals, unresponsive to the outside world, after reportedly using these drugs. Earlier this year dozens of U.S. soldiers and Marines were hospitalized after allegedly vaping synthetic cannabinoid oil. “The side-effect profile of these compounds is unknown,” says William Burgin, a neurologist and professor at the University of South Florida. “It’s bag of nightmares for those dealing with patients on the frontlines.”
Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, binds to cannabinoid receptors in the brain and body rather weakly, Burgin says. But some molecules in the synthetic chemicals hold on with an iron grip; they can be hundreds of times more potent than natural pot. Their chemical structures often bear little resemblance to THC, and that is part of what makes them difficult to regulate. In 2011 the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency banned five of the earliest such compounds to hit the streets, and in 2012 Congress passed the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act outlawing 15 chemicals. Makers responded with creative chemistry, crafting other molecules that have similar effects and thus staying one step ahead of the law, says Jeff Lapoint, director of the Division of Medical Toxicology at Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center. The exact formula in the drugs recently found to be tainted with rat poison remains unclear.
“It’s like a game of Whac-A-Mole: Make one thing illegal, and the next week something new pops up,” Lapoint says. Authorities at the state level are also trying to crack down. But this is “happening in a piecemeal fashion and varies from state to state,” says Stefanie Jones, director of audience development at the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for drug law reform.
Lapoint says he has purchased packets of these drugs and analyzed their contents. The compounds he found within varied wildly, and he says those who choose to use them can never really have any idea what they might be putting into their bodies. “It’s like playing Russian roulette,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re getting or how much you’re getting or what these chemicals will do.”
