Worst place, worst time: Trump faces virus spike in Midwest

OSHKOSH, Wis. (AP) — Gabe Loiacono is the kind of voter President Donald Trump can ill afford to lose. He lives in a pivotal county of a swing state that is among a handful that will decide the presidency. 

A college history professor who last cast a ballot for a Democrat more than 20 years ago, Loiacono is voting for Democrat Joe Biden because he thinks Trump has utterly failed in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“President Trump still does not seem to be taking the pandemic seriously enough. I wish he would,” said Loiacono. He said he never thought of Trump as “all bad” but added, “There is still too much wishful thinking and not enough clear guidance.” Continue reading.

Jared Kushner: ‘Complaining’ Black people have to ‘want to be successful’

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White House adviser Jared Kushner argued on Monday that the Black community is struggling because they do not “want to be successful.”

Kushner made the remarks on Fox & Friends after he was asked about a recent meeting with Ice Cube.

“There’s been a lot of discussion about the issues that were needed in the Black community for the last years, particularly it intensified after the George Floyd situation,” Kushner explained. “You saw a lot of people who were just virtue signaling, they’d go on Instagram and cry or they would put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court. And quite frankly, that was doing more to polarize the country than it was to bring people forward.” Continue reading.

Rallies Are the Core of Trump’s Campaign, and a Font of Lies and Misinformation

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A recent rally in Wisconsin was typical. In 90 minutes, President Trump made 131 false or inaccurate statements.

Two minutes and 28 seconds into a campaign rally on a recent Saturday night in Janesville, Wis., President Trump delivered his first lie.

“When you look at our numbers compared to what’s going on in Europe and other places,” Mr. Trump said about the coronavirus raging across the United States, “we’re doing well.”

Red highlighted words are Trump lies or misstatement.

The truth? America has more cases and deaths per capita than any major country in Europe but Spain and Belgium. The United States has just 4 percent of the world’s population but accounts for almost a quarter of the global deaths from Covid-19. On Oct. 17, the day of Mr. Trump’s rally in Janesville, cases were rising to record levels across much of the country. Continue reading.

The GOP under Trump now resembles authoritarian parties in Hungary and Turkey: study

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Liberal democracies aren’t necessarily replaced with authoritarian rule because of an armed coup d’état. In some cases, critics of President Donald Trump have been warning, authoritarians will gradually undermine a country’s system of checks and balances — which is what those critics have accused Trump of trying to do. And according to a new Swedish study, the Republican Party now resembles authoritarian parties in Turkey and Hungary.

The study was conducted by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, which compared political parties in a long list of countries and found that under Trump, the Republican Party’s rhetoric now resembles authoritarian parties like AKP in Turkey and Fidesz in Hungary. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — both of whom Trump has praised — are two disturbing examples of authoritarians who were voted into office and have been attacking the checks and balances and democratic norms in their countries.

Journalist Julian Borger, discussing the study in The Guardian, notes that that V-Dem uses an “illiberalism index” that “gauges the extent of commitment to democratic norms a party exhibits before an election” — and Borger points out that the GOP has “followed a similar trajectory to Fidesz, which under Viktor Orbán, has evolved from a liberal youth movement into an authoritarian party that has made Hungary the first non-democracy in the European Union.” Continue reading.

In the Know: October 28, 2020

Days to the November Election: 6

Let’s get out the vote!
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Early voting!
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Voter Protection
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Attoreney General Keith Ellison
Ellison encourages Minnesotans to know their rights at the polls, KSTP
Unequal justice under the law, The Hill

Continue reading “In the Know: October 28, 2020”

They Did Not Vote in 2016. Why They Plan to Skip the Election Again.

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Between a third and a half of all eligible voters typically stay home during presidential elections.

EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. — Like nearly half of all the eligible voters in her county in 2016, Keyana Fedrick did not vote.

Four years later, politics has permeated her corner of northeastern Pennsylvania. Someone sawed a hole in a large Trump sign near one of her jobs. The election office in her county is so overwhelmed with demand that it took over the coroner’s office next door. Her parents, both Democrats born in the 1950s, keep telling her she should vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Anything is better than President Trump, they say.

But Ms. Fedrick, who works two jobs, at a hotel and at a department store, does not trust either of the two main political parties, because nothing in her 31 years of life has led her to believe that she could. She says they abandon voters like “a bad mom or dad who promises to come and see you, and I’m sitting outside with my bags packed and they never show up.” Continue reading.

The Trump administration is illegally hiding an FBI report on white supremacist terror

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For decades, much of the right-wing media has emphasized the threat posed by violent Islamist extremists while downplaying the terrorist potential of far-right white supremacist and white nationalist groups. But that doesn’t make the latter any less dangerous. And one Democratic congressman who is sounding the alarm is Mississippi’s Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee and wants to know why an FBI report on white supremacists is four months late.

In an article published this week, journalist Spencer Ackerman — who specializes in national security matters for the Daily Beast — notes that the FBI “has failed to produce a legally required report detailing the scope of white supremacist and other domestic terrorism, despite mounting concerns that the upcoming election could spark far-right violence.” That report was supposed to be released in June, and according to Ackerman, Thompson is demanding answers.

“I would hate to think that they are reacting to President Trump’s machinations about his dislike for senior leadership in the FBI,” Thompson told the Daily Beast. “This report probably would not be viewed favorably by this administration. That, I think, precipitates the report not being released by November 3.” Continue reading.

Dow plunges 650 points as coronavirus cases flare up, stimulus hopes fade

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Rising infections and dimming stimulus optimism compound uncertainty in the run-up to the election.

U.S. markets slumped Monday as investors grappled with uncertainty about economic stimulus negotiations and soaring coronavirus cases across the country.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 650 points, or 2.3 percent, to 27,686. The S&P 500-stock index tumbled nearly 1.9 percent, to 3,401, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index dropped 1.6 percent, to 11,359. The sell-off erased all of the blue-chip index’s gains for October.

The United States hit a record high in new coronavirus cases Friday, with more than 83,700 reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins. The resurgence is compounding volatility in the countdown to the presidential election, said Craig Erlam, an analyst with OANDA. Continue reading.

Gaffes put spotlight on Meadows at tough time for Trump

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For Mark Meadows, the gaffes have come at exactly the wrong time.

Meadows, President Trump‘s resolutely charming chief of staff, rose from Congress to the White House earlier this year on the wings of his devout loyalty to the president and an uncanny faculty for staying on message in front of the TV cameras.

Yet on several occasions this month — with Election Day looming and Trump trailing badly in the polls — Meadows has found himself racing to mop up contentious comments he’s made about the coronavirus, most recently his statement Sunday that the country is “not going to control the pandemic.” Continue reading.

Seeking power in Jesus’ name: Trump sparks a rise of Patriot Churches

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KNOXVILLE, TENN. — The new congregation is gathered in a barn in Lenoir City, Tenn., with a roof that has a 60-foot American flag painted on it. And they are praying for a Trump landslide.

Standing in a circle, the dozen or so men and women, young and old, lay their hands on their pastor, Ken Peters, as he raises their requests to God.

He prays that “communism and socialism and transgenderism and homosexuality and abortion will not have their way in this land.”

“Yes, Lord,” someone cries. Continue reading.