Gov. Walz and Lt. Gov. Flanagan Update: August 31, 2020

August 31, 2020

Updates from the Governor

This past weekend, Governor Tim Walz announced that Minnesota has received approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program.

LWA provides a temporary additional $300 per week benefit to Minnesotans receiving unemployment benefits. To be eligible, an applicant must have a weekly unemployment benefit amount of at least $100 and must be unemployed due to COVID-19.

“I am glad that Minnesotans receiving unemployment benefits will receive an additional $300 a week to help make ends meet during this crisis,” said Governor Walz. “We will continue to use every resource at our disposal to help Minnesotans through this pandemic.”

Continue reading “Gov. Walz and Lt. Gov. Flanagan Update: August 31, 2020”

Cell phone data shows Sturgis rally attendees later visited 61% of US counties

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Just as many health officials feared, South Dakota’s annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is on its way to further the current health crisis. Cases of the novel coronavirus continue to grow nationwide and with bikers from across the country returning home from the event states are bound to see an increase in local cases. More than 100 COVID-19 cases have been linked to the event so far, the Associated Press reported.

The event brought at least 250,000 individuals, many who attended maskless. According to Camber Systems, which collects and analyzes cellphone data, 61% of counties in the U.S. have been visited by someone who was at Sturgis. Multiple states have already reported cases linked to the 10-day event which began Aug.7.

“Imagine trying to do contact tracing for the entire city of (Washington), D.C., but you also know that you don’t have any distancing, or the distancing is very, very limited, the masking is limited,” Navin Vembar told the AP, co-founder of Camber Systems. “It all adds up to a very dangerous situation for people all over the place. Contact tracing becomes dramatically difficult.” Continue reading.

September 1, 2020

Days Until the Election: 63

DFL Action Center
63 Days OUT – Let’s get to work!
If you’d like to help the DFL Party fight for criminal justice reform, better schools, wages, our environment, and health care, click here to get more involved there are events happening in your area!

Biden-Harris Yard Signs 
We’re excited to announce that Biden-Harris yard signs are now available! Click this link to order yours today! As you may have heard, Donald Trump is spending over $14 million on ads right here in Minnesota, and every sign you order helps us fight back by funding the DFL Party’s grassroots organizing program! 

Check out our Biden-Harris for President merchandise in the DFL Store!
Click here to see our new shirts, signs, and stickers!

2020 Election
Here’s *exactly* how Democrats win the Senate, CNN

Continue reading “September 1, 2020”

Ukraine language in GOP platform underscores Trump tensions

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The absence of an updated Republican party platform for the 2020 election is allowing President Trump to avoid hard commitments on the sensitive foreign policy issue of Ukraine, where his withholding of $400 million in military assistance was at the heart of his impeachment by the House. 

The GOP’s decision to preserve the 2016 platform keeps in place toned down language related to Ukraine that was negotiated at the time by Trump’s then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is serving a seven and a half year prison sentence on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections.

Manafort, who was found by the Senate Intelligence Committee to have had direct contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign, successfully removed any commitments to lethal military assistance to Kyiv as part of efforts to soften language towards Moscow. Continue reading.

Jim Gaffigan, Popular Comedian, Breaks Silence To Torch Trump On Twitter

Jim Gaffigan is an award-winning, well-regarded, popular comedian. Part of Gaffigan’s appeal is his family-friendly comedy, that he writes and works on with his wife and frequently centers around food and Gaffigan’s obsessions with food. Gaffigan has a large family, which includes five children, leading to my favorite Gaffigan joke: “If you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth, just imagine you’re drowning … and then someone hands you a baby.” Gaffigan is also devoutly Catholic, and was asked by the Roman Catholic Church to do warmup for the World Meeting of Families back in 2015, when he opened for the Pope—yes, that Pope.

If you’ve ever listened to Gaffigan interviewed or watched his act, he tends to stay away from talking politics. He’s not averse to saying that he is in general liberal, but he also doesn’t do much joking when it comes to the current political climate. However, on Thursday night, Gaffigan seems to have become fed up with the titanic levels of hypocrisy on display and the depressing level of pig-headedness shown by people pretending that what Trump is saying and doing is anything besides grotesque. So Gaffigan went online, and went off.

It began innocuously enough.

Continue reading.

Historian explains the huge mistake ‘increasingly desperate’ evangelicals make in backing Trump

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The latest Pew Research poll shows that 72% of white evangelical Protestants approved of Donald Trump’s work as president in June, and 59% strongly approved. That number was slightly lower than his approval earlier in the year. But about 82% of white evangelicals said they would vote for Trump, even higher than the proportion who voted for him in 2016. 35% say that Trump has been a “great President” and 34% say he has been “good”. No other religious subgrouprates Trump positively.

His pronounced support for the evangelical political agenda has been obvious since he became a candidate. In January 2016, he told Iowa evangelicals at Dordt University, a Christian college in Sioux Center, in his typically egotistical phrasing, “We don’t exert the power that we should have. Christianity will have power. If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.”

Why didn’t an irreligious and publicly immoral candidate present moral difficulties to a religious group which has traditionally emphasized the close connection of faith and character? Many skilled researchers and analysts have tried to understand how people who profess such devotion to Jesus and the Bible could see Trump as their prophet. I have no better explanation than anyone else. Continue reading.

Trump Deprives Congress Of Intelligence On Russian Election Interference

The squatter in the Oval Office, and all of the people intent on keeping him there, are at this point not even bothering to conceal that they will do literally anything to make that happen. That includes going back to the well of foreign interference — and hog-tying Congress to keep the American public in the dark about it. 

This chapter of the story starts in February, a lifetime ago when coronavirus was lurking in our side vision. Trump purged everyone in intelligence services working to hold Russia at bay by keeping Congress and the public informed on election interference. Trump’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence has closed that circle now, CNN has learned, by announcing that it will not be holding in-person briefings with the House and Senate intelligence committees, but will instead provide information in writing.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff responded following the ODNI’s announcement: “This is a shocking abdication of its lawful responsibility to keep the Congress currently informed, and a betrayal of the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy. This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian. And the American people have both the right and the need to know that another nation, Russia, is trying to help decide who their president should be.” In-person briefing are critical to lawmakers’ ability to ask questions, investigate, challenge assumptions, and be fully apprised of what’s happening. Continue reading.

Senior intelligence officials will no longer brief Congress in person on foreign threats to the 2020 election

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Senior intelligence officials will no longer brief Congress in person on foreign interference in the 2020 election. Instead, they will inform lawmakers of threats in writing, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Saturday.

The decision, made with Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s assent, arose out of concerns that briefings to lawmakers have resulted in leaks of classified information, an ODNI official said.

But the change threatens to undermine the community’s pledge to be transparent with Congress and the public at a time when three foreign adversaries, including Russia, are seeking to influence the American political process. Continue reading.

How the G.O.P. Stretched Hard to Defend Trump on Race and Gender

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Never before has a convention by a major party felt compelled to call such a diverse array of speakers to defend the character of a sitting president.

The Republican convention this week marked an extraordinary effort to recast President Trump’s image on issues of race and gender, with the party stretching to find African-Americans who would testify that Mr. Trump is not racist, and lining up women to describe him as sensitive and empathetic — qualities he rarely displays in public.

This vouching for Mr. Trump, as he was nominated for a second term, was without precedent. Never before has a convention by either major party felt compelled to call such a diverse array of speakers to defend the character of a sitting president.

And it was done with a crucial political goal in mind: making a divisive leader appear more palatable to white moderate voters, who have turned against the Trump-led G.O.P. in recent elections, while also trying to peel away some nonwhite voters from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee. Continue reading.

‘The whole thing was a sham:’ RNC features Trump at naturalization ceremony

The Republican National Convention featured a naturalization ceremony that President Trump presided over. A ceremony that turned heads as hundreds of thousands of immigrants await their own ceremonies and are falling victim to backlogs. It was considered a stunt by some activists as the Trump administration continues to separate migrant families, turn away asylum seekers at the border and is still trying to dismantle DACA. MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez is joined by Alida Garcia of FWD.US and Lindsay Toczylowski, the Executive Director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. View the video here.